CFSP 5 Year Plan - RI Department of Children, Youth & Families

Training –
The Department, through the Child Welfare Training Institute, maintains its
commitment to ensuring that supervisors in Family Service Units and Juvenile Probation staff
have the skills, knowledge, and experience to provide effective leadership to promote
improvements in safety, permanence and well-being for children, youth and families. Further,
DCYF is working to ensure a stronger support system for foster parents that will improve their
skills, knowledge, and experience to ensure a safe and nurturing environment for children in
their care.
In 2007-2008, the Department implemented additional core training modules for Social
Caseworker II classifications in the Family Service Units, and for Child Support Technicians
(CST). The additional modules provide a Core III in-service training for Social Caseworker II
staff, and a Core I Pre-Service and Core II In-Service curricula for CSTs. Through a more
intensified training for CSTs, the Department is focusing on its need to expand capacity within
its family service units and this effort is increasing the role and responsibilities of the CSTs to
support shared responsibilities and a team approach to casework. The team concept is
particularly relevant as DCYF identifies strategies to improve its performance with monthly
caseworker visits with children. The IV-E Training Plan has also been updated to include the
additional core curricula for the child support technicians and social caseworker II
classifications.
Over the past two years, the Department and Family Court worked collaborative to
implement the Court Improvement Program (CIP) training grant – providing information to
Judges, magistrates, legal staff and CASA attorneys regarding the family-centered Risk and
Protective Capacity Family Assessment. DCYF attorneys were trained on April 11, 2008.
Another session was held for the Court on July 10, 2008 with a follow up meeting on
December 17 with the judges sitting on the DCYF calendar. In October 2008, Casa attorneys
and social workers were trained. On May 1, 2009 – parents’ rights attorneys with the Public
Defender’s Office and RI Legal Services.
Also, as part of the CIP Training initiative, the Child Welfare Institute in collaboration
with Rhode Island College’s School of Social Work, is working with the Family Court to
develop a multi-disciplinary training to improve understanding of the various mental and
behavioral health evaluations that can be requested by judges and magistrates. This initiative is
known as Developing Partnerships Across Systems, and it will serve to help clinicians better
understand the expectations that the Court has in ordering evaluations of parents and/or
children; and therefore, help clinicians to better inform judges on matters before the Court
relating to clinical evaluations.
National Child Welfare Leadership Institute –
The Department participated in one of the National Child Welfare Leadership Institutes
held in Seattle, Washington in June 2008, sponsored by the Social Research Institute in the
College of Social Work at the University of Utah. This Leadership Institute is formed through
a cooperative agreement with the University of Utah and the Children’s Bureau to promote
leadership within the selected child welfare agencies designed to enhance efforts to improve
child welfare outcomes.
R.I. Department of Children, Youth and Families
Title IV-B Child and Family Service Plan – 2010 - 2014
44