Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making Dialogue

The organisers of the Signs of Safety and Structured Decision-Making Learning and Evaluation Collaborative asked that the following introduction be provide background to the March 31 dialogue. Here’s the introduction. The videos and SDM News article are at the bottom of the page.

Introduction:

On March 31, 2010, the Signs of Safety and Structured Decision-Making Learning and Evaluation Collaborative (LEC), along with Carver County Child Community Social Services hosted a meeting designed to bring together practitioners who have endeavoured to integrate Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making® (SDM), along with leaders from these two traditions for a dialogue about the hopes, challenges and potential in this integration.

In the videos that follow, the viewer will first see a series of practitioners discussing their own attempts at this integration, what works well and what has been challenging about these attempts. The practitioners are:

  • Rob Sawyer, Child and Family Services Olmsted County, Minnesota
  • Sue Lohrbach, Child and Family Services Olmsted County
  • Cindy Finch, Community Social Services Carver County, Minnesota
  • Carole Cole, Community Social Services Carver County, Minnesota
  • Dan Koziolek, Community Social Services Carver County, Minnesota
  • John Vogel, Massachusetts Department for Children and Families
  • Linda Billman, Child and Family Services Olmsted County Minnesota

In the second video, the viewer will see a dialogue between Kathy Park of the Children’s Research Center and Andrew Turnell, co-founder of Signs of Safety, about their hopes and concerns on the overlap of their work

Executive Summary

Across North America, there has been a growing interest in finding ways to utilize a combination of Turnell’s Signs of Safety and The Children’s’ Research Center’s Structured Decision Making® to enhance overall child welfare practice, in particular that related to safety and risk. In 2009, Casey Family Programs, sensing a need for some clarity and consistency in these integration attempts, initiated “The Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making® Learning and Evaluation Collaborative” (LEC) which subsequently has been supported by in-kind supports from all LEC Planning Team members.

The LEC is a peer learning community with members from child welfare jurisdictions, Casey Family Programs and provider partners who are striving to integrate these approaches. The LEC seeks to support practices that improve how child welfare professionals can respectfully engage families as partners in safety and risk assessments and safety planning so that whenever possible, children are supported at home with their families and thus prevented from needlessly being placed in care.

On March 31, 2010, the Learning and Evaluation Collaborative, along with Carver County Child Community Social Services hosted a meeting designed to bring together practitioners who have been involved in attempts to integrate these two approaches along with leaders from these two traditions for a dialogue about the hopes, challenges and potential in this integration.

In the videos that follow, the viewer will first see a series of practitioners discussing their own attempts at this integration, what works well and what has been challenging about these attempts. In the second video clip, the viewer will see a dialogue between Kathy Park of the Children’s Research Center and Andrew Turnell, co-founder of Signs of Safety, about their hopes and concerns on the overlap of their work. Bill Madsen of the Family-Centered Service Project in Massechussetts and a member of the LEC Planning Team acted as moderator of both these conversations.

Expanded Summary

A number of recent developments in Child Welfare have attempted to give ‘on-the-ground’ child welfare workers, supervisors and managers both practice strategies and concrete tools to enhance family participation and equitable decision-making in this work. Two of those developments designed to improve these areas are the Signs of Safety approach to child welfare (Turnell and Edwards, 1999; Turnell and Essex 2006; Turnell 2008) and the Structured Decision-Making® System (Children’s Research Center, 2008).

Signs of Safety was developed in Australia in the mid 1990’s by Andrew Turnell and Steve Edwards (Turnell and Edwards, 1999). This work has continued by Turnell and many others (for example: Turnell and Essex 2006).

The Signs of Safety approach to child welfare has three main objectives:

  • Strategies for the creation of effective working relationships and a shared focus to guide casework among all stakeholders (child, family, worker, supervisor, extended community, etc.). These strategies draw upon the brief therapy and solution focused literature (de Shazer, 1985).
  • Enhancing critical inquiry and minimizing the potential for bias by workers through a rigorous “mapping” of the safety, danger and risk undertaken collaboratively by all stakeholders.
  • The development of a joint understanding by workers, families and extended community as to what the attendant dangers, risks, protective capacities and family strengths are, and what clear, meaningful, behavioral changes and goals are needed to create “rigorous, sustainable, on the ground child safety” (Turnell, 2008).

The Structured Decision Making® System (SDM) is an approach to assessment and decision-making in child welfare based on a series of research-based, structured tools that are to be applied at key decision points in the child welfare case process. Application of these tools is designed to enhance consistency, validity, and equity in the key case decisions that child welfare practitioners have to make every day. SDM® is developed by the Children’s Research Center (CRC), a division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

SDM® has the following objectives:

  • Introduce structure to support front-line staff at critical decision points
  • Increase consistency, validity, and equity of decisions at those key points
  • Target resources to families most in need (i.e., those most likely to experience recurrence)
  • Use aggregate assessment and decision data to inform agency wide monitoring, planning and budgeting

Across North America, there has been a growing interest in finding ways to utilize a combination of Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making® to enhance overall child welfare practice. In 2009, Casey Family Programs, sensing a need for some clarity and consistency in these integration attempts, initiated The Signs of Safety and Structured Decision Making Learning® and Evaluation Collaborative (LEC). Subsequently, the LEC has become a self managed collaborative with in-kind supports provided by the LEC Planning Team members.

The LEC is a peer learning community with members from child welfare jurisdictions, Casey Family Programs and provider partners who are striving to integrate these approaches. The LEC seeks to support practices that improve how child welfare professionals can respectfully engage families as partners in safety and risk assessments and safety planning so that whenever possible, children are supported at home with their families and thus prevented from needlessly being placed in care.

On March 31, 2010, the Learning and Evaluation Collaborative, along with Carver County Child Community Social Services hosted a meeting designed to bring together practitioners who have been involved in attempts to integrate these two approaches along with leaders from these two traditions for a dialogue about the hopes, challenges and potential in this integration.

The Videos

In the videos that follow, the viewer will first see a series of practitioners discussing their own attempts at this integration, what works well and what has been challenging about these attempts. In the second video clip, the viewer will see a dialogue between Kathy Park of the Children’s Research Center and Andrew Turnell, co-founder of Signs of Safety, about their hopes and concerns on the overlap of their work. Both of these conversations were moderated by Bill Madsen, of the Family-Centered Service Project.

The Children’s Research Center publish a regular newsletter and the feature article in the April edition carried an article on the Signs of Safety/Structured Decision Making dialogue. The article is available here.

All members of this dialogue feel proud of this initial conversation but also understand that while an important beginning it was only a beginning. We look forward to continuing this conversation and welcome you as a viewer to join in it!

For more information on The Learning and Evaluation Collaborative please contact co-chairs: Susan Getman, Senior Director of Strategic Consulting at Casey Family Programs (sgetman@casey.org). or Peter Pecora, Managing Director of Research Services at Casey Family Programs (ppecora@casey.org).

More information on Structured Decision Making.

More information on the Family-Centered Services project.

References:

Children’s Research Center. (2008). The Structured Decision Making model: An evidenced-based approach to human services. Retrieved from http://www.nccd-crc.org/crc/crc/pdf/2008_sdm_book.pdf

de Shazer, S. (1985). Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy. New York: Norton.

Johnson, W. and L’Esperance, J. (1984). Predicting the reoccurrence of child abuse. Social Work Research and Abstracts. 20(2) 21-26.

Johnson, W., Wagner S., and Scharenbroch, C. (2007). California Department of Social Services Risk Assessment Validation: A prospective study. Retrieved from http://www.nccd-crc.org/crc/crc/pubs/CA2007riskassessmentvalidation_rpt.pdf

Turnell, A. and Edwards S. (1999). Signs of Safety. New York: Norton

Turnell, A., & Essex, S. (2006). Working with Denied Child Abuse. London: Open University Press.

Turnell, A. (2008). Background paper of the Western Australia implementation of Signs of Safety. Retrieved from https://www.signsofsafety.net/?q=bioandpublications