By Rick Zechman, CMSW
All states are required by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to develop a Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP), which is a five-year strategic plan that sets forth the vision and goals to be accomplished to strengthen the state’s child welfare system. The CFSP aligns and consolidates plans for multiple programs that serve children and families, as well as older youth and young adults formerly in foster care, to ensure a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of children and families.
In June 2024, our state submitted a new CFSP to ACF, setting the following goals for the 2025-2029 period:
Goal 1: Strengthen all child welfare staff’s ability to assess ongoing safety throughout the child/family’s engagement with child welfare services.
Goal 2: Increase access to services for children and their families to keep children in the safest, least restrictive setting.
Goal 3: Develop and support a stable, competent, and professional workforce in child welfare.
Goal 4: Implement continuous quality improvement.
Goal 5: Improve engagement with stakeholders to ensure services are responsive to the needs of communities and outcomes for children and families are improved.
The North Carolina Division of Social Services (NC DSS) relies on those with lived experience to help create these goals and monitor progress toward achieving them. Examples of having lived experience include parents who have successfully navigated child welfare services and reunified with their child, resource or kinship parents providing foster care for children, and former foster youth.
At the statewide level, there are collaborating partners in NC, including but not limited to SaySo (Strong Able Youth Speaking Out), the Child Welfare Family Advisory Council, and Foster Family Alliance of North Carolina that support the development of individuals with lived experience. They engage in the annual progress and service reporting meeting with our federal partners, monitoring and providing feedback on the CFSP goals. Their voice at the table reminds policymakers and others why we all do this work, and the importance of working together to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
Individuals with lived experience contribute within various state-level workgroups and are integrated within all ongoing policy, practice, and programming design teams. NC DSS has five design teams that meet monthly to review performance data and policy guidance. They include the Safety, Permanency, Well-Being, Continuous Quality Improvement, and Workforce Development Design Teams. Collaborating partners advise NC DSS on implementation strategies and practice standards that will improve outcomes for children and families. The Safety Design Team provides recommendations for Goal 1, the Permanency Design and Well-Being Design Teams for Goal 2, the Workforce Design Team for Goal 3, and the CQI Design Team provides recommendations for Goal 4.
Sharing lived experiences and feedback contributes to amending child welfare policy guidance. Sometimes, the changes may seem simple, but they are impactful to a family. For example, instead of calling appointments for a family to see their child “visitation,” we now call that “family time.”
At the community-based level, NC DSS facilitates listening sessions/focus groups and administers surveys to individuals with lived experience, identifying their perception of the successes and challenges of the child welfare system. Listening sessions and surveys target youth who are experiencing foster care, birth parents, kinship providers, and resource parents. Analyzing this information helps identify key issues that inform the development of a CFSP goal. For example, information reported by kinship providers contributed to the development of objectives for Goal 2, the need to develop kin-specific licensing standards. Developing those will support the overall recruitment and retention efforts of kinship providers, and safely support the children they care for.
To review the CFSP in its entirety, click here.
Rick Zechman is an Educational Consultant with the UNC School of Social Work’s Family and Children’s Resource Program
