Robin Spath

Sharing the Baton, Not Passing It: Collaboration between Public and Private Child Welfare Agencies to Reunify Families

ABSTRACT Increasingly, public sector child welfare agencies are contracting with private agencies for the provision of specialized services to clients while maintaining oversight and case management responsibilities. At the same time, funders, both private and public, are demanding that service providers partner and collaborate with one another. In this article, we present results from a study of a unique partnership between two state child welfare agencies and a private child welfare agency aimed at reunifying families whose children have been removed and placed in foster care. Data was obtained from 41 key informants using a questionnaire and a structured interview. Findings support earlier studies of collaboration, and indicate the strengths of this partnership and factors that facilitated and hindered it. The results have implications for agencies that both contract for and provide a range of child welfare services as well as other interagency relationships.

Child Protection Professionals Identifying Domestic Violence Indicators: Implications for Social Work Education

This article presents findings from a study of 3 professional groups most frequently involved in child maltreatment cases: child protection social workers, district attorney social workers, and police detectives. The survey instrument examined the identification and concordance level of domestic violence indicators. Analysis of the research findings suggest varying differences across the 3 groups surveyed. The author discusses the importance of social work education in training professionals on domestic violence theories and assessment tools, and developing systems to assess for and address domestic violence issues, multidisciplinary approaches, and ethical practices for sharing client information.

Developing Strong Helping Alliances in Family Reunification

The development of positive working relationships with clients has been a hallmark of the social work profession since its inception. More recently there has been a resurgence of interest in both measuring the dimensions of the working relationships and the processes through which these relationships are formed. This article reports findings on working relationships from a comprehensive evaluation of a family reunification program that used multiple approaches to study these relationships. These overlapping findings are discussed in the context of program elements that fostered engagement and the maintenance of positive working relationships between clients and staff.