Building Community Partnerships (BCP) Update

Regionalizing our practice has become a focal point at this time for this strategy team.  There are many benefits of regionalization including the community and the social workers getting to know one another and increasing their understanding of the resources in a particular community.  This would allow workers to better service the community both in the area of prevention and intervention. 
 

Celebrating Families V

Celebrating Families V will take place in June. Social Workers are encouraged to refer parents who have successfully reunified with their children to be honored at June's event. Our goal is to recognize parents' efforts in the reunification process, to engage parents, and to foster collaboration between successfully reunified parents and Children and Family Services (CFS) . CFS will host one more Celebrating Families events this year in October.

Healthy Tomorrows

The Healthy Tomorrows program has been extremely successful working with five schools and the Therapeutic Art Center in Santa Ana. This program has worked with the various principals to determine each schools specific needs.   The program serves hundreds of adults and children, recruiting both adult and teen volunteers to implement support? and educational modules to address these needs.

Community Forums

Community Forums are being held on a quarterly basis to advise and gather community feedback on the redesign of the child welfare system. The most recent of these forums was held on October 19th at the Santa Ana Police Department Community Center.  The topic was Substance Abuse and the Child Welfare system. The discussion included three themes:

First, child safety, permanency and well being is best addressed by first completing an assessment and treatment of alcohol and other drugs.  Sid Gardner, President of Children and Family Futures noted that in 2004 an estimated 40% of child welfare parents were in need of treatment of alcohol or drug related issues. 

Second, families need to be engaged and empowered to more fully participate in their case planning using a strength-based approach and provided coordinated community based support and services when they need it.  Lisa Carmel, Chairperson of Parents Taking Action (PTA) related that the Family to Family initiative which includes Team Decision Making (TDM) Meetings, Icebreakers, and Parents Taking Action is a major step toward meeting these objectives.   

Third, the Orange County community’s ability to redesign the child welfare system and achieve the federal and state mandated outcomes it will require a strong collaboration of all the county agencies and community partners including shared expectations, shared responsibilities, shared data, shared resources, shared?

Parents Taking Action(PTA)