Rich with Insights on Child Welfare, New Book Maps Out Organizational Change and Children’s Policy Reforms

Newswise — As the director of the District of Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency, Olivia Golden led the turnaround of a troubled system. In her new book, Reforming Child Welfare, she draws on her expertise as a senior federal official, local administrator, and an academic to map out strategies for improving and revitalizing the last safety net for vulnerable children and families, the public child welfare system. Golden chronicles the experiences of the D.C. child welfare agency and two state agencies, places them in the context of national child welfare data, and matches the accounts with rich analyses of research on leadership, management, and organizational change. University of Miami President Donna Shalala calls the book "the most important social welfare/public administration book in a generation," and writes, "Her conclusion is straightforward: even the most complex issues of our society—like child welfare services—can be strengthened with a careful mix of leaders, patience, and a disciplined, evidence-based strategy." State child welfare agencies in 2007 received 3.2 million referrals involving 5.8 million children and, after screening and investigation, found almost 800,000 of those children to have been abused or neglected. Golden describes the many ways public child welfare systems can improve the lives of such children and their families, drawing lessons from national successes, such as the doubling of adoptions from foster care in the past 15 years.

At the same time, she reviews the equally compelling evidence that children are too often failed by the system, either seriously injured or killed by their parents or damaged after they enter the system, for example by placement in multiple temporary foster homes or dormitory-like institutions. She reports that, as a result of these problems and more, child welfare agencies in about 30 states have been ordered to operate under the supervision of a federal or state court. Among them were the agencies in Alabama, Utah, and the District of Columbia whose stories she tells. Golden integrates the agencies' experiences with insights from research in such fields as child development, child welfare, and organizational change. She highlights the programmatic and technical fixes that worked in the agencies and is candid about those that failed. She also lays out a clear path for transforming organizations amid difficult political conditions to get good results for children. "Harsh political climates and passive, blame-driven internal cultures are common in organizations suffering from many years of failure," says Golden. "Changing these long-standing patterns may not be easy, but it is far from impossible. It requires a mix of vision and action, early wins that can build into a longer-term strategy, skilled leadership, careful attention to evidence and performance tracking, and a twin focus on the political climate and the internal organizational culture." At each agency Golden studied, leaders worked to achieve concrete goals, improve the staff's outlook on their mission, and earn the confidence of outside partners. The performance data that became important to managing the agencies both held caseworkers accountable and identified signs that their work paying off. Like leaders in Alabama and Utah, Golden opened communication lines with stakeholders, including the courts overseeing the reform of the system, and with the judges who adjudicated child welfare cases, fostering collaboration where conflict and blame-trading had become entrenched. Reforming Child Welfare goes beyond the lessons from state agencies to include ambitious national reform proposals. Golden identifies the federal investments outside child protection programs that would have the greatest payoff for abused and neglected children and their families, naming funding for treatment of maternal depression as one example. She also draws insights from further afield—from health research about patient safety—to propose new ways of preventing child deaths from abuse and neglect. Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, emphasizes the urgency of Golden’s message. "Olivia Golden's inside view and her reporting on best practices creates a perfect opportunity for policymakers to prevent tragedies," says Canada, "not just to react to them." Olivia Golden is an institute fellow at the Urban Institute and was director of the Child and Family Services Agency of the District of Columbia from 2001 to 2004. Previously, she served in two presidentially appointed positions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, first as commissioner for children, youth, and families and then as assistant secretary for children and families. In her most recent public sector position, Dr. Golden served in 2007 as director of state operations for New York State, overseeing the management of all state government agencies and founding the children’s cabinet.

Reforming Child Welfare, by Olivia Golden, is available from the Urban Institute Press (ISBN 978-0-87766-759-9, paper, 312 pages, $29.50). Order online at http://www.uipress.org, call 410-516-6956, or dial 1-800-537-5487 toll-free. More information is available at http://www.urban.org/books/reformingchildwelfare.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation. It provides information, analyses, and perspectives to public and private decisionmakers to help them address these problems and strives to deepen citizens’ understanding of the issues and tradeoffs that policymakers face.