Pathways to Permanency Project, a Vaya Health initiative created to align the work of the child welfare and behavioral health systems, continues to develop solutions to improve outcomes for child welfare involved youth and families. Child welfare stakeholders utilize monthly workgroup sessions to explore the impact and feasibility required of each potential solution to identified problems. As the project managers, Benchmarks’ staff often hear that a potential solution is to create new policies to rectify the problem. Since we know that policies are essentially written practices on paper, they do not change the real issue, our driving core principles. We must consider if creating a new policy is the answer. Perhaps a better approach is to evaluate how existing policies can be aligned to ensure they promote resiliency and healing.
According to Leora Wolf-Prusan, agencies can add, drop, amend and adapt policies in order to make the most efficient and effective change. One practical way to do this is to add a general statement to existing policies about the agency’s commitment to provide trauma-informed care. Another way to improve current policies is to drop trauma-uninformed policies. For example, when policies conflict with children’s ability to have normalcy, child serving agencies can drop rules that decrease normalcy. This issue arises often around technology as it is an essential part of an adolescent’s life and culture. When placement providers have policies that restrict the use of all technology, dropping this portion of this policy can be a trauma-informed solution.
Sometime policies cannot be dropped because they are required by law but exploring if policies can be amended is another option to consider. For example, child and family team meetings (CFTs) are required for cases involved with child welfare. However, the policy was amended to allow the CFTs to occur in a location determined by the family instead of requiring the CFT to occur at the local social services office, which we know can be trauma-inducing. Lastly, we can consider adapting other agencies trauma-informed policies instead of starting from the very beginning creating our own policies. Not only is it more time efficient, but it also can potentially influence decision makers if other reputable agencies are already using the trauma-informed policy.
Pathways to Permanency Project vision is that every child has the right to a permanent family and while on that permanency journey, resources to meet their safety & well-being needs are critical and must be met. As project facilitators, Benchmarks’ staff is committed to facilitating the group to consensus on the most effective solutions before the next phase, solution implementation. As with all of Benchmarks projects, we are committed to trauma-informed work to achieve better outcomes for child welfare involved families.
Reference:
Wolf-Prusan, L. (n.d.). Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership. http://cars-rp.org/_MHTTC/docs...nformed-Policies.pdf. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from http://cars-rp.org/_MHTTC/docs...nformed-Policies.pdf
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