June 9, 2023 Volume 2, Issue 6
An update has been made to the Legal Aspects Training section.
 June is National Reunification Month
To raise awareness and show support during National Reunification Month, we will be sharing the resources, partnerships and stories of the strong and resilient families in Missouri. You can help show your support by:
- Using the Reunification Month email signature graphic
- Using the Reunification Month virtual background
- Participating in a community event
- Exploring how you can support biological and foster families
- Sharing posts from our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter
This year's national theme is, "We believe in the Resiliency and Strength of families." Find more awareness and outreach tools on the American Bar Association website.
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A Reunification Story | Corey Richardson
Check out this video of Corey Richardson, a biological father, telling his story of reunification. This is a story to touch foster parents and birth parents alike! Listen as Corey shares his experience working with his team and the foster family caring for his children and his journey to reunification.
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Bonus Episode: Meet Tiffany Moore, Deputy Director of Operations and Administration
Meet Tiffany Moore, CD Deputy Director of Operations and Administration. Tiffany has been with the division for over 19 years and worked in many different roles. She has a passion for keeping families safely together and supporting her fellow teammates.
We hope you enjoy this episode! Don't forget, you can earn education credits for listening to the podcast through your ESS portal. To ensure you get credit enter the name and date of the podcast in the, "my development screen." Be sure to share with your colleagues and subscribe so you never miss an opportunity to be at the table and hear first hand of the great things happening at Children's Division.
LISTENING TIP: The podcast is available on most popular podcast apps and you can listen and subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts at this link.
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CFSR Survey- Open through June 15
We need your input regarding our strengths and challenges in preparation for our CFSR on-site review. Click here to participate! If you have any questions, please reach out to
CCWIS Survey
You may have heard over the last few years that we will be getting a new child welfare information system to replace FACES. You may have even wondered, “What ever happened with that?” Here’s what has been happening:
- Children’s Division has been working with the Office of Administration, Enterprise Project Management Office to map out our current business processes for each area of the system. That work is almost done!
- CD has brought on Public Consulting Group (PCG) to serve as project managers for the planning and implementation of a new system. PCG has not only done great work for Missouri in the past, but has experience with exactly this type of child welfare systems project in several other states as well.
Now we need to be able to say what it is we want a new system to do for us and how it can best support our work. For that, we need you! We are asking for staff members at all levels of Children’s Division to complete the survey linked below. Firstly, our new system needs a name! Some of our favorites from other states are listed within the survey, but we want to come up with something together for Missouri. Secondly, we need staff from ALL job roles and program areas to come to our system design sessions and tell us the best and worst of your day-to-day system experiences, and what changes you would like to see. That means frontline, case aides, office support, supervisors, specialists, managers, trainers, etc. If that sounds interesting to you and you’re able to commit an hour or two at a time to the scheduled sessions, let us know in the survey and we’ll be in touch! NOTE: You may not be notified of meeting dates until later in our process when business requirement sessions are scheduled.
If you have any questions, reach out to Cynthia Hull.
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Introducing the Family Centered Services Brochure
We are excited to share with you the newly developed Family Centered Services Brochure. One thing we hear from our field teams is the need for more tangible documents to assist with the FCS work we do with families. We hear you! Please keep sharing your ideas and requests. We are working on getting you the tools and resources you need to best help support you and your work with our families to prevent concerns of abuse and neglect.
This is one step to assist with our prevention work. This brochure can be used as a way to explain FCS to families who come to the attention of Children’s Division and during early intervention work. It could be used during an investigation or assessment, with community partners, in our schools, during FCS case opening conversations---there is really no limit to who and how this can be used! We hope this is a helpful tool as we work to grow the conversation around prevention. Remember, prevention is everyone’s responsibility!
This will be housed on e-forms as well as on the FCS section of the intranet. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Elaine Casteel.
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Victim Children on Combined Calls
All victim children from a combined secondary call should be checked to ensure they are listed as a victim child on the primary call before concluding the report. At this time, FACES is not automatically making a victim child from a secondary call a victim on the primary call if they are not already listed as such on the primary call. A ticket has been made for correction and FACES is currently working to fix the issue. They identified several open cases where the child was not listed as a victim child on the primary call after a secondary call was combined into it.
Please check all current open reports to ensure that all victim children are correctly listed on the primary reports.
CCU would also like to remind everyone to please check the admin box to assure that all of the NMI has been completed prior to emailing CCU. Our Specialists have very limited time during the day to review completed NMIs and close cases and we don’t want there to be a delay in concluding the case if part of the NMI has not been completed. We appreciate everything that you do. Keep up the good work and keep calling CCU!
CCU will be closed on Wednesday, June 21st to attend the Governor’s Award Ceremony for Quality and Productivity in Jefferson City. We will resume taking calls on Thursday, June 22nd.
CCU Shining Star Jenny Minnis
CCU’s Shining Star for this month is Jenny Minnis. Jenny graduated from Northwest Missouri State University in 2011 with a bachelor’s of science degree in psychology and sociology. In the spring of 2012, Jenny started her career with Children’s Division in Putnam County in the 3rd Circuit. In 2018, Jenny was promoted to Supervisor with the 9th Circuit. Jenny said that her family and faith has helped keep her motivated to help others and Children’s Division has been her vessel to make a positive impact on the community and families she has worked with during her time with the division. Jenny stated that CCU has been the support backbone to helping us as we help our community. By utilizing CCU Jenny stated we are finding closure for those families sooner than we could alone. The CCU staff have been our mentors and leaders in our offices before joining the CCU unit and continuing to mentor and educate us on the frontlines. Jenny would like to thank each of the CCU team members for their support and service--You are the calm voice on the other end of the line that we are thankful to have.
We are sad to say that Jenny’s last day with Children’s Division was June 1st. Jenny has always been a strong advocate for CCU from the start. She would coach her staff on what cases to call CCU on and would often sit with them when they were first calling CCU as a support. Jenny also called CCU herself to staff cases while she was assisting the field due to staff shortages. She was always pleasant and kind during staffings and would always be open to recommendations from the Specialists. You will be missed Jenny. Good luck on your future endeavors.
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The following is the Legal Aspects schedule and other relevant trainings for the rest of the year. To access the trainings, click on the course ID or links listed below.
NOTE: If you are a supervisor, please take a moment to register for one of the supervisor courses below. They are required to be taken by new supervisors within 6 months of employment. Openings in both are currently available!
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Date
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Course
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Details
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June 21-22
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Legal Aspects of Investigations
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CD000153
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June 28-29
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Legal Aspects of Family Centered and Adoption Cases
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CD000171
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July 5-6
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Legal Aspects of Investigations
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CD000153
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July 19-20
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Legal Aspects of Family Centered and Adoption Cases
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CD000171
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July 26-27
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Legal Aspects of Family Centered and Adoption Cases
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CD000171
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If you have trouble enrolling in a legal aspects course, please contact CD.latrainingteam@dss.mo.gov. For trouble enrolling in other courses please contact, CD.PROFDEVELOPMENT@dss.mo.gov.
CD23-15 - Annual In-Service Training Requirement for 2023
CD23-16 - Boys Hope Girls Hope Kansas City Closed
PA23-CM-06 - Care Management - Show Me Healthy Kids
CD23-11 - St. Luke's Hospital of Kansas City dba Crittenton Children's Center
PA23-HI-02 - Medical Records Fees
PA23-HI-01 - Revised Children's Division Form
We Want to Hear From You!
If you have something you would like to share in the next newsletter issue, please email Ashton Kever at ashton.kever@dss.mo.gov.
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