Child welfare professionals work exhaustively to prevent neglect, maltreatment and deaths. When tragedies occur, however, families, community members and social workers collectively mourn and demand answers.
Roxanna Flores-Aguilar knows this first hand. One can hear the emotion in her voice when she recounts what it was like to lead an office in the aftermath of a child death.
A former regional administrator in the Department of Children and Family Services’ (DCFS) Lancaster Office, Roxanna recalls the crushing grief felt by the community. She also remembers working tirelessly to advocate for additional resources and to support affected staff.
“My experience was powerful and memorable,” Roxanna said. “Tragedy in this line of work is not something any of us take lightly, but I was motivated by the perseverance and resilience of our staff, despite a plethora of challenges outside of their control.”
Creating a Culture of Safety
Influenced by her experience, Roxanna’s highest priority became elevating the voices of social workers, supervisors and managers on the front line and identifying and implementing best practices to mitigate the risk of harm to children. Today, she manages the Continuous Quality Improvement Division.
Intent on examining its practices and learning from the experiences of other child welfare jurisdictions, the department joined the National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS) in 2019. The partnership is a quality improvement collaborative intended to enhance child safety and reduce instances of neglect and abuse.
Thirty-one child welfare jurisdictions from across the country comprise the NPCS. The group offers organizations a space to share data and best practices and to collaborate on strategies to mitigate common challenges. In particular, it seeks to integrate the concept of safety science into the child welfare space.
Safety science is the practice of bringing together data, technology, research and shared experiences to improve safety within a given environment. Other high stakes industries including health care and aviation have been known to implement the practice with significant results.
In the context of child welfare, safety science recognizes the complex nature of child welfare work, and seeks to create a supportive environment where staff may share, ask questions and learn from mistakes. In addition, it emphasizes system accountability.
“The NPCS aligns with our department’s core values and strategic direction,” Roxanna said. “It has allowed us to share our successes, challenges and lessons learned, and to hear from other jurisdictions. What we’re learning is that our system is not that different from others and that we all face similar difficulties.”
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