Being an Administrator: Child and Family Care Service Problem (Essay Sample)

Child and Family Care Service Problem
Students Name
Institution
The Child and Family Care Service Problem
The system faces a myriad of challenges in the current century. Many problems facing the society such as unemployment, high number of families living in poverty, drug abuse, diseases, community violence and homelessness play a major role on the impact of child and family well-being. All these factors lead to a complex caseload that greatly strains the system financially. Nevertheless the child and family care services sector must react swiftly to provide a solution and safeguard the well-being of the children.
These caseloads have continued to grow substantially and at the same time resources to tackle these issues have continued to dwindle in comparison. The children that present themselves to these services require multiple services with a multi-agency involvement. However, child services do not have a direct control over other agencies and thus problems of referrals crop in. Families that try to navigate through this bureaucratic process are often bewildered and give up mid-way. Additionally, the availability of these services is skewed against the most vulnerable groups. The families most vulnerable to child-abuse or abandonment may not easily be in receipt of therapeutic services that are a priority for psychological development.
For child preventive school services the securing of resources to combat the challenges affecting families and children is a serious problem. Sometimes the services offered by the staff are a mismatch to the requirements of the family. This can be caused by overwork of personnel due to the high volume of cases in the system. Some families such as birth parents may require house assistance services but the agency in-charge may instead offer parent training classes. The challenges faced by families are multi-faceted and require a multiple agency input (McCrory, 2015).
Families may also be lacking in resources to facilitate travel to these agencies. The requirement to visit these agencies for evaluation by different families can hamper service delivery since most families would not have a means of transport. This would put in jeopardy the well-being of the child and the family at large. The lack of resources by these agencies also limits their house visits to clients hence a solution to this problem must be fast-tracked.
Ways to Facilitate Better Client care in different Agencies
Different agencies need to create a process map that will identify each step and their interactions with families. This will help staff and the agency at a whole to evaluate their current position and attune them to the frustration of waiting periods the families’ experience. This evaluation will help different agencies understand the crucial part they have to play in the overall process of service delivery to their clients.
Another solution for better service delivery would be to incorporate the meeting of families at their place of residence both physically and emotionally. The agents might conduct open houses in the most vulnerable communities. This will act as both preventive and educative measures for better child welfare (Sutton & Hoyt, 2016). With an increase in home visits by community-based organizations and other public agencies it will aid in fast-tracking solutions for needy families. For instance one agency, child welfare services, might participate in a home visit and will refer an unemployed parent to the Welfare to Work Agency which will aid the parents in looking for a job. The child welfare agent may help the parent fill the requisite forms and this will reduce the amount of people that give up mid-way in the process. The agent will also be in a position to share the information with other agencies and help determine the urgency of different cases.
A parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) will help in improving the relationship between a child and parent. This will help address behavioral problems of child-abuse or neglect and help improve the bond of families. In the long-run the cases of future child abuse will be reduced since parenting practices of the abusive parents would have been addressed. This joint intervention is necessary since child behavior and parenting are inter-related and this will improve service delivery to clients (Urquiza and McNeil, 1996). Other initiatives that can improve service delivery to children and their families include provision of emergency telephone numbers that families can use for an expeditious crisis solution, public education to increase community awareness on solutions available for any family crisis.
Ways to streamline the intake process
Bringing every agency into one forum will help reduce the waiting times experienced by families when they visit these agencies. Families will be able to interact with different agencies at a central location at this will reduce the travel costs and time taken to fill out forms of various agencies. With a single forum better service delivery will be achieved and the intake of families into will be increased. This will also empower even more families to enroll into these services.
The formation of an interagency network will also assist in reducing the intake time. Interpersonal contacts between different agencies and community based organizations will help improve information dissemination. The diffusion of innovation theory suggests that improvement in social networks will help in quality improvement strategies and a streamlining of organizations agendas (Rogers, 2003). These interlinkages will improve the referral system and help coordinate activities thus improving the intake of children and families
Technology can also play a major part in reducing the amount of intake procedures. The use of databases will improve accuracy and opportuneness with which the community based organizations can identify quickly and provide services to their clients. With internet connectivity communication is improved and becomes affordable to all. Online interactive tools will help low-income earners and families in remote regions to access these needed services. With HIPPA disclosures which permit disclosing individual information without their consent: will improve the creating of a database that will improve the intake of vulnerable groups in the society. Such information as victims’ abuse, a disclosure to avert a safety or health threats etc. a...