Implementing at Carver County

Implementing Signs of Safety in Carver County Minnesota

People frequently ask: ‘How do you go about implementing the signs of safety and safety-organised ideas and practices across a statutory organisation?’ At the initiative of Director Gary Bork and Manager Dan Koziolek, Carver County Community Social Services (CCCSS) in Minnesota, USA have been implementing the signs of safety and safety-organised ideas and practices across all of their statutory child protection services since March 2005. CCCSS provides child protection services within Carver county to a population of 88 000 on the outskirts of Minneapolis/St Paul. From 2005 CCCSS have employed Andrew as their practice and organisational consultant in helping them undertake their practice and organisational learning journey with the signs of safety. Carver sustains an ongoing working relationship with Andrew by having him visit for a week, twice a year to provide training and consultation and by holding monthly phone consultations between Andrew and the organisation’s practice leaders.

As one means of growing the work and the culture of safety-organised practice, the practice leaders regularly videotape their work of ‘mapping’ cases using the signs of safety framework and in leading appreciative inquiries with practitioners. Excerpts of these video-recordings are constantly being uploaded to a website that can be accessed by Carver professionals and Andrew. This is a key improvement mechanism by which all the professionals involved with CCCSS can reflect on and refine both their practice and the organisational implementation.

As another strategy to deepen their journey with safety-organised practice and to offer these ideas to other agencies in Minnesota, CCCSS staff now offer regular public training events, some led by Andrew and some led by Carver professionals. The video material of Carver staff describing their use of signs of safety was filmed at a workshop on March 25, 2008.

Article and Videos

• Child Welfare News (article)
  A 4 page article by Dan, describing some of the implementation experience
• Appreciative Inquiry' Interview (video)
  A 50 minute video-recording of Andrew leading an 'appreciative inquiry' interview of CCCSS workers and supervisors focused on their experiences of using the signs of safety ideas and practices. This video was recorded on March 25 2008 at a public two-day training on Safety Planning in Child Protection Casework offered by Carver County and Andrew and attended by over 140 Minnesotan professionals. (A breakdown of the video content including approximate timings is listed at the bottom of this page)
• A Mother's Experience of Carver Practice (video)
  Three segments of an interview with a mother called Julie, who’s life and parenting was dominated by out of control drinking, who wants to share her experience of how Carver county professionals helped her turn her life around. Julie’s description of the work links to descriptions by Sarah Manthei (case worker) and Michelle Selinger (supervisor) in the March 25 recording of how they understand they guided the work with Julie. These two videos are an example of the ongoing ‘continuous improvement’ strategy Carver is undertaking to closely examine and learn from good practice with difficult child maltreatment situations by listening to the on-the- ground experience of its service deliverers and service recipients.

Some of the Carver County Community Social Services staf,
all scarily dressed in their ‘Team Safety’ tee shirts

Front Row, Sitting: Sarah Manthei and Amy Conzemius - kneeling down Carole Cole and Angela Korich-Starling
Second Row, Kneeling: Amy Racich, Bobbie Traxler, Andrea Robideau, Melissa Shimitz, Sherry Amelse, Michelle Selinger, Diane Wickenhauser, Tanya Sabol
Back Row, Standing: Gary Bork, Joy Vivian, Nancy Dager, Sarah Brandt, Andrew Turnell, Ashley Peterson, Sarah Kulesa, Dan Koziolek, Nicole Mercil, Tracee Bosch, Joy Sindelir, and Fafica Dean.