Child advocate columns, Sept. 22, 2009

3312 Northside Drive Suite D-250 Macon, Georgia 31210
478-757-2661 478-757-2666 (fax) www.oca.georgia.gov

Office of the Child Advocate
Tom C. Rawlings, Child Advocate

55 Park Place, NE Suite 410
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
404-656-4200 404-656-5200 (fax) www.gacfr.oca.georgia.gov

The "Light bulb" at the End of the Tunnel?
by Tom C. Rawlings
Sometimes it takes years of experimentation to get a process right. Thomas Edison, it's said, struggled through thousands of failed attempts before finally creating a working light bulb. His response to reports of his many failures, though, was a tenacious one: "I never failed once," he said. "I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process."
Such may prove to be the case with Diversion, the practice instituted by our Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) five years ago that has resulted in significant decreases in the numbers of child abuse and neglect reports that are investigated. Over those years, DFCS has encouraged county and regional child protection offices to experiment with alternative, "family-centered" methods of addressing child maltreatment reports that are deemed not to require a full-blown child abuse investigation. The results have been a mix of both excellent and questionable local practices. Some of those practices leave advocates feeling confident that children's safety is a priority, while others have raised eyebrows. Over these same years, there has been great debate both within DFCS and between the agency and the child advocacy community on the best ways to handle these alternative approaches. Several advocates, including the Office of Child Advocate, suggested the need to ensure a uniform statewide approach to these cases that will ensure child safety, fully assess each family's issues, and address each family's problems timely and appropriately. OCA addressed the history of Diversion and these recommendations in our 2008 annual report, available online at www.oca.ga.gov. In line with the suggestions of many in the child advocacy community, the Carl Vinson Institute of Government recently recommended that DFCS take steps to transform its experiments with diversion into a robust, nationally-recognized "alternative response" policy and practice. And DFCS has responded positively by bringing aboard Jo Ann Lamm, who developed North Carolina's highly-respected alternative response model. The North Carolina model, as it turns out, is the very one to which OCA and other advocates suggested our child protective services leadership look in developing one for Georgia. Over the next months, Ms. Lamm with the backing of DFCS leadership and the support of the Office of the Child Advocate will be meeting with DFCS social workers, agency management, mandated reporters, and the child advocacy community to create and implement an alternative response system in whose integrity and effectiveness we can all have confidence. It is anticipated that the result will include more explicit guidance for agency employees on the types of cases that are appropriate and are not appropriate for a referral to other resources; a more robust approach to assessing and addressing the needs of families who have less severe but significant parental fitness issues; and policies that will provide for more uniform treatment of families wherever in the state they may be, from Walker County to Woodbine. Between now and next spring, Ms. Lamm will be doing the yeoman's work of creating this new model and of forging the relationships and partnerships necessary to make it work. While Ms. Lamm is here to bolster and improve our existing practice, there will undoubtedly those who have grown comfortable with the status quo. Therefore, we encourage our friends in the child advocacy community to engage with her and to support her as she works to help us improve child safety outcomes for Georgia. Among his other pithy observations, the Wizard of Menlo Park had this to say about perseverance: "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." While the debates over Diversion have been long and tiring, we may at last be close to obtaining what the child advocacy community desires: a strong, national model for alternative response that we can be confident will keep Georgia's children safe and sound. So don't give up: there may be a light bulb at the end of this tunnel!