Chronicle

IMPROVING OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN IN PHILADELPHIA:
stories of early implementation
APRIL 2014
early implementation

Look at me
Normal I may seem
But inside my frustration became colossal
A facade you see
Friends can’t know where I reside
Teachers can’t know neither
I want to taste normalcy
Instead I get a colossal amount of disappointment.
A family to call my own
A room to name my throne
That’s all a kid asks
A missed prom
So many things. That will throw us off track.
Look at me
A foster youth
When will I find my permanency
Struggle between the future and now
I can’t concentrate
The here and now blocks the future
Call it distraction
Look at me later
Determination
I made it to the top
foster youth in the system
No matter what I never stopped
God kept me sane presently
So yes I thank you
Another foster youth in the system
Who can say “I made it through.”
Kaliyah Huskey, 18, wrote this poem and performed it at a community town hall
meeting in Philadelphia in May 2013. The Department of Human Services organized
the meeting to interest community members in becoming foster parents for older youth like
Kaliyah. Speakers included youth in foster care, a foster parent and top leaders at DHS.
Kaliyah spent several years in group homes and wanted to move to a family setting, but
a worker told her she was “too old.” She was not too old, of course, but there is a lack of
foster families willing to care for older youth in Philadelphia. This is just one of the issues
the Department of Human Services plans on changing with a major reform eﬀort called
Improving Outcomes for Children, or IOC.

Table of Contents
Frontispiece: poem by Kaliyah Huskey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Nina Griggs’ Story: The Bond Between a Case Manager and a Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Introduction: A Closer Walk with Families and Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
NET and APM: Two Pioneers on a New Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Deborah Ellerby’s Story: A Supervisor’s Take on IOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Family Team Decision-Making Conferences: The Heart of IOC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Strengthening Families: Changing Practice from Beginning to End. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Community Recruitment in Action: No Babysitters Needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Community Engagement: The Face of IOC on the Street. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Growing Pains: The Difficult Dance of Running Two Systems at Once . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Congregate Care and a Four-pronged Approach to Right-sizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Tondalaya’s Story: When Education Spells Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
The Role of the Courts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
The Role of Philanthropy: Creating a Relentless Urgency for Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Joanne Matthews’ Story: A Foster Parent Who Goes the Extra Mile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Cross-Fertilization with Behavioral Health and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Outcomes, Evaluation and Assessment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Financing IOC: a Case Rate and Support from a Federal Waiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Anita Smith’s Story: When Foster Parents Keep the Hope of Reuniﬁcation Alive . . . . 56
Lessons Learned: A Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Looking Ahead: The Next CUAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A Young Man’s Story: The Power of Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Nina Griggs’ Story*
: The Bond Between
a Case Manager and a Parent
Nina Griggs has six children, all of them removed from her home by
the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) in 2013. This
is her first time in the system. Her situation is complicated by the fact
that she is homeless and does not get along well with the relatives
who are caring for her children.
Griggs’ life is difficult, but she is fortunate to be working with a case
manager from Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), a
community and economic development organization in Philadelphia
with a focus on families. APM is a pioneer in a child welfare reform
effort called Improving Outcomes for Children (IOC), in which services
are moved to the communities where families live and each family has
one main social worker.
As part of IOC, Griggs’ case “flipped” from DHS to APM in August
2013. Griggs met her APM case manager, Precious Randall, at
a family team conference, where Griggs helped develop her own
service plan designed to get her children back. She appreciated this
conference and the fact that she was a full participant. “We discussed
a lot of the stuff that I have to do, my goals,” she says. Before APM
took over her case, she explains, her DHS caseworker “just told me
what I had to do.”
Griggs is in a parenting group at the Achieving Reunification Center
(ARC), an arm of DHS that focuses on parent education. “It does
help when you talk to other parents that are going through the same
things,” she says. “You’re not alone; you’re not by yourself.” Griggs
comes to APM twice a week for visits with her children. Before her
case flipped to APM, she had to go to DHS headquarters in Center
City for these visits, not an easy trek for her or for those who had to
bring the children downtown.
Griggs is a cancer survivor and is working hard to bring her children
home. “My life is nothing without my kids,” she says. Her case
manager, Randall, shares Griggs’ hopes for reunification and points
out that she is “in Nina’s corner.” She adds that as case manager,
her primary concern is the safety of the children, but says she
believes “every parent deserves a second chance, and Nina is doing
everything that she needs to do, because she wants her kids back.”

This strength-based approach is central to IOC, and it means a lot to
parents like Griggs. She says that Randall really listens to her. “With
Miss Precious,” Griggs explains, “I can call and say, ’Miss Precious,
this or that,’ and she’ll look into it. Like I had mentioned to her about
my kids not having socks on. She said she’d look into it. All I want
is for her to listen to what I have to say. I’m not trying to make her
job difficult.”
Randall’s job is difficult, of course. But when you see a mother getting
stronger, it is worth it. Griggs had a court hearing in December, and her
hard work and determination is paying off. The judge complimented
her on all she had done to meet the requirements in her service
plan: completing the parenting course at the Achieving Reunification
Center, negative drug screens, counseling and treatment, regular visits
with her children.
Reunification was on the horizon. But this story, like the stories of many
families in the system, was full of Catch-22s. Griggs was homeless and
could not be reunited with her children until they had a place to live.
Randall helped her navigate the housing bureaucracy in Philadelphia,
including APM’s own housing options. Griggs had to complete lengthy
applications and attach extensive documentation, such as the children’s
birth certificates and Social Security cards. As kinship caregivers,
her relatives had these documents. In addition, Griggs had a criminal
record. Her criminal case is closed, but most rental applications list
this as a barrier.
Griggs’ determination and hard work paid off. She found a home
and moved there in April. The children began their transition to
reunification with weekend visits to the new home. Griggs speaks of
her children as her “miracles.” In the past, she says, she sometimes
felt like giving up. “But then, you know, with the love for your kids,
you can’t. You gotta stay strong.”
*Name has been changed.

We all carry
the burden
of trying to
help even
the smallest
among us.
– FROM THE SOCIAL WORKERS’ MURAL,
NORTH BROAD ST. AND
WEST GLENWOOD AVE.,
PHILADELPHIA

APRIL 2014 | 9
Introduction: A Closer Walk with Families and Children
“Once you’re involved with the family like we are right now,
we have the opportunity to do what DHS was not able to do
before. We see the family more. We’re more involved with
them and stay in constant communication with them.”
– ENRIQUE MELETICHE, CASE MANAGER, APM
Nina Griggs and her APM case manager, Precious Randall, are part of Philadelphia’s new
approach to child welfare, a large package of reforms called Improving Outcomes for Children.
IOC grew out of the tragedy of a child’s death in 2006 and an acknowledgment on the part of
the city and DHS leaders that their child welfare system had failed the families and children they
were mandated to serve. A six-year, in-depth planning process took leaders far beyond a simple
restructuring or shake-up of the organizational chart. DHS engaged 150 stakeholders, including
private providers, child and parent advocates, judges, community leaders, and state and city
officials. The result was a new vision and a profound transformation in one of the largest child
welfare agencies in the country.
With IOC, DHS is moving away from its traditional dual case-management system, in which DHS
and provider agencies shared responsibilities for families, but which in practice meant that roles
and functions were unclear and uncoordinated. IOC is a single case-management system that
moves services to the community where families live and that clearly delineates the roles and
responsibilities of DHS and private providers. When fully operational, 10 Community Umbrella
Agencies (CUAs) will deliver services and support to families and children in 10 geographical
jurisdictions aligned with the city’s police districts.
DHS intends to achieve four outcomes with the implementation of IOC:
• More children and youth will be maintained safely in their own homes and in their
own communities while their families get services.
• More children and youth will achieve timely reunification or other permanence.
• Use of congregate care will decrease.
• Child, youth and family functioning will improve.
The first two CUAs – Northeast Treatment Centers (NET) and Asociación Puertorriqueños en
Marcha (APM) – charged into action in 2013. The next three were ready to roll out in early 2014.
The final five CUAs were chosen by the end of 2013.

10 | APRIL 2014
When IOC is fully operational in 2015, each CUA will be in charge of a child welfare operation
that is larger than that of most counties in the state. They will provide all case management
services and will subcontract with foster care and congregate care providers. But these 10
CUAs will not be “Mini-Me” versions of DHS. IOC is many things, but across the board its
essence is, as APM supervisor Marlene Lee puts it, “a closer walk with the family.”
A Year of Transition and Challenge: What’s in This Report?
This report chronicles the first year of IOC, as leaders and staff from DHS and the first two
CUAs stepped together into a new world of child welfare practice. The report documents the
victories and challenges of CUA staff and of the DHS leaders who had their backs. It examines
what it takes to make such a transformational change and how DHS coped with the struggles
of running two systems at the same time as implementation began. The document highlights
the stories and lessons learned and includes the voices of parents, youth and a new breed of
foster parents.
IOC at a Glance: One Family, One Plan, One Case Manager
Improving Outcomes for Children is a package of reforms that will change almost everything
about how services are delivered to children and families in Philadelphia’s child welfare system.
Highlights include:
• DHS continues its hot line, investigation and intake responsibilities (front-end services),
but hands off cases to a community-based CUA once initial service plans are developed.
No DHS staff will be laid off as a result of IOC, but some staff will shift to the front end or
to other new positions at DHS that were created as part of IOC.
• Each family in the system has just one case manager: their go-to person from the
CUA. This case manager coordinates services and supports the family at family team
conferences and in court. No more confusing or conflicting messages from multiple
workers in the home.
• Services are delivered in the neighborhoods where families live. No longer will parents
have to haul active toddlers across town on multiple buses or subways to get to
parenting classes, treatment or therapy.
• Each family has a family team conference at key decision points in their case. Parents
bring a support team of their choice and help design their own service plan. DHS
facilitators and team coordinators manage the conferences. The CUA case manager is
present once the case has been handed off and at every conference thereafter until the
case is closed.
• An initiative called Strengthening Families will be infused throughout the course of a
case to offer opportunities to build protective factors such as parental resilience and
the important social connections that every family needs.
• The CUAs will contract with provider agencies to provide foster care and other
specific services.

APRIL 2014 | 11
• The CUAs will access local neighborhood organizations in their jurisdictions to build
networks of support aimed at prevention of child abuse and neglect, as well as to recruit
foster parents who live in the community.
• Use of congregate care will be limited to short-term treatment based on specific needs.
Older youth will be placed in family settings whenever possible, either with their own
family, with relatives or with foster parents in the community.
• DHS will oversee and monitor the CUAs’ work to ensure that families get the services
they need and that children are safe.
• IOC is cost-neutral. There is no new money, but funds can be spent differently.
NET and APM: Two Pioneers on a New Stage
“Being the ﬁrst CUA to roll out presented us with unique
opportunities as well as challenges. For us, it was a privilege
to partner with DHS so early in the process of reform.”
– ROBIN ORTIZ, DIRECTOR, NET COMMUNITY CARE
Northeast Treatment Centers (NET) named its CUA NET Community Care – for
“comprehensive, accessible, responsive, effective” – and was the first to take cases, beginning with
in-home cases in January 2013. NET’s jurisdiction spans the 25th police district, approximately
one square mile. The population is largely Hispanic and African-American, and the community
includes pockets of deep poverty. NET, the parent organization, offers the full continuum of
child welfare services, including a strong In-Home Protective Services (IHPS) program. NET also
has a broad range of behavioral health programs, including addiction and treatment services
for adolescents and adults, most of them community-based. For youth offenders, NET has
an in-home detention program and an evening reporting center.
Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), the second CUA, began taking in-home
cases in April. APM covers the 24th and 26th police districts, also an area of rich population
diversity, including Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and a growing Middle Eastern
population. Almost 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Before becoming
a CUA, APM had the full range of child welfare services with the exception of in-home services,
which it added. APM is also an economic and community development organization with wide
visibility in the city.
In the spring of 2014, APM moved its CUA operations into a brand-new building complex that
it had developed, called Paseo Verde. It houses APM’s offices, affordable and market-rate
apartments, a clinic and a pharmacy.

12 | APRIL 2014
Training
All CUA case managers and supervisors are required to take the state’s Charting the Course
training program for social workers. A 120-hour classroom curriculum, plus an additional six
hours online, Charting the Course ensures that workers have the skills needed to provide
quality services to children and families. It includes modules on safety and risk assessment,
permanency, the DHS electronic case-management system, the court process and more.
NET’s IHPS workers who were transferring to the CUA began their training while still carrying
caseloads. As NET supervisor Evelyn Claudio says, “It was very hard in the beginning because
we had to attend these trainings and then we also had a caseload. We had to make sure we
saw all families the required three hours per week, which meant two visits per family.” DHS
made sure that case managers for all the other CUAs closed their cases or handed them off
before doing the training. This was an early IOC lesson learned and a good example of how
DHS and its CUA partners worked quickly to adapt and adjust.
Who Does What at the CUAs
Each CUA puts its own stamp on staff configuration, responsibilities and job titles, but certain
positions are required under IOC. Each CUA also has several spots filled by DHS staff: two
practice coaches who help case managers navigate the DHS system, and a senior learning
specialist, who coaches the CUA supervisors. The latter position was added early in 2014.
Looking ahead, Brian Clapier, DHS deputy commissioner of performance management and
accountability and the chief IOC implementation officer in 2013, says, “At the end of the day,
if the CUAs are meeting their outcomes and hitting the state regs, I don’t know that we need
to prescribe a specific structure.” In the meantime, each CUA has the following positions
and functions:
• The CUA director is in charge of the overall activities of the CUA and its
relationship with DHS.
• The CUA case management director oversees supervisors and case managers.
• The director of quality assurance handles subcontracts and ensures that CUA
services and practices meet state and IOC guidelines, as well as the needs of the
families being served.
• The intervention director supports resource development and community-based
prevention programs, including identifying evidence-based practices in the community.
• The community engagement liaison builds links to the community, educates and
engages residents in IOC activities, identifies local services for families and helps with
recruitment of foster parents.
• Supervisors oversee a unit of five case managers, who work directly with families.
• Case managers are the go-to social workers for 10 families.
• The resource family coordinator engages families in the community to become
foster parents, with a particular focus on recruitment of homes for older youth.

APRIL 2014 | 13
• Strengthening Families coordinators help the CUA staff infuse the Strengthening
Families framework into the overall work of the CUA, organize parent cafés and train
table hosts and café hosts.
• Case aides support case managers in working with the families, supervising visits,
assisting parents in developing homemaking skills, de-cluttering, etc.
• Outcome specialists facilitate case closure, reunification or other permanency. They
support biological parents during court-ordered visits with their children and prepare
parents and children for reunification.
• After-care workers support families after case closure.
• Life skills coaches educate youth and parents about skills such as housing and money
management, work and study, self-care and daily living.
• Well-being specialists work to ensure that children get timely medical, dental and
behavioral health exams and services when needed.
• Youth and parent mentors are part-time positions for those who know the system
first-hand and can support families and youth who are in it.
Transfer of Cases to the CUAs
The IOC plan was to transfer cases to the CUAs based on different levels of care, progressing
quarterly over the course of a year: in-home cases in the first quarter; general foster care in
the second; treatment and specialized foster care in the third; and, finally, congregate care and
residential treatment in the fourth. DHS chose not to transfer those families whose cases were
about to close.
This thoughtful rollout made sense. But very quickly, DHS and the first two CUAs realized that
the planned sequence did not match the lives of the families they serve. Some families had
some children at home and others in placement. If a child needed to be removed, an in-home
case had to be turned into a placement case. As DHS Deputy Commissioner Clapier pointed
out, “For a CUA to have a case turn into placement before it has placement cases is just a
nightmare. You have to figure out how to send this case back to DHS.” Splitting a case between
DHS and the CUA was not an option under IOC’s vision of one case manager, one family.
With the rest of the CUAs, DHS is ramping up the sequence. They will take both in-home
and kinship and foster care placement cases during their first three months of operations and
specialized foster care and congregate care in the second three months. The CUAs will thus
have the full range of cases within six months.
An Urgent Need for Infrastructure
When NET found itself working with placement cases ahead of the expected schedule, staff had to
scramble to finalize subcontracts with foster care agencies. Until these contracts were activated
– and they had to be approved at numerous levels – the CUAs could not take placement cases.

14 | APRIL 2014
The stress for the CUAs was palpable. Andi Oxenburg, CUA case
management director at NET, explains, “Once we started taking
placement cases, they were coming so fast, but we knew we had
to be as responsive as possible to the needs of the families.” The
depth of the infrastructure required was a learning experience for
Eboney Kraisoraphong, quality assurance director at NET. “It’s
made me appreciate more what DHS had to deal with and why
they have so many staff behind the scenes,” she said.
Building a new infrastructure may not be the sexiest part of IOC,
but it is the heart of what it takes to change a system. The CUA
quality assurance directors are making it happen. NET shared its
subcontract templates and drafts with APM, which began taking
cases in April 2013. They both shared templates with the newer CUAs, which will mold them
to reflect their own communities. If NET and APM had to invent the wheel, there was no reason
for the other CUAs to have to reinvent it.
If It’s Monday, It Must Be a CUA Meeting
Every Monday at 9 a.m., throughout the year, the first two CUAs met with Clapier and Paul
Bottalla, DHS director of policy and planning. Other DHS staff and community providers joined
them, depending on the agenda. As new CUAs were chosen, their staff, too, made the journey
to Center City on Monday mornings.
These meetings provided the creative and administrative juice that hashed out the details of IOC
and quenched the fires of confusion that sometimes arose, especially around case transfer. For
example, when a case is transferred, DHS staff has to tag it, scan it and upload it so the CUAs
can get the information they need to support the family. Some cases were transferred to the
wrong jurisdiction because ZIP codes were inaccurate; 8 percent of the cases were not linked
to police districts.
Together, DHS and CUA staff addressed the technology glitches, along with other substantive
issues, including IOC policy guidelines, subcontracts and safety questions about specific cases.
Nothing was off limits at the Monday meetings.
Every CUA staff member interviewed for this chronicle expressed enormous gratitude for these
meetings. When asked what was most helpful around startup, the answer was inevitably,
and without hesitation, the Monday meetings. “DHS has been very open to feedback and
very responsive. It feels safe to disagree in these meetings,” NET’s Kraisoraphong says. NET
CUA Director Ortiz added, “Brian [Clapier] has been great about the agenda and having these
meetings be what we need. When we ask about the nurses, the nurses come the next week.
If we ask about intake, intake is there to meet with us.”
The Monday meetings were also helpful in engaging private providers that are not CUAs but that
have other important roles to play in IOC. Clapier invited them to the meetings to talk about what
they had to offer as potential subcontractors.
Building a new
infrastructure may
not be the sexiest part
of IOC, but it is the
heart of what it takes
to change a system.
The CUA quality
assurance directors
are making it happen.

APRIL 2014 | 15
The Monday meetings are continuing during 2014, chaired by DHS Commissioner Anne Marie
Ambrose and Bottalla. As the new CUAs come onboard, the attention to proper case transfer
will be more important than ever. Rather than handling case-by-case specifics at the Monday
meetings, DHS is creating a new unit under Operations Director Kimberly Ali. The Monday
meetings will focus more on IOC policy and planning issues.
Case Management Begins: A New Level of Responsibility
CUA case managers brought a range of child welfare experience to their new jobs. All had
worked with DHS-involved families, but very few had worked at DHS itself. For virtually all
of them, this new role as case manager was much bigger in scope and responsibility than
their past jobs.
Under IOC, case managers have responsibility for the families throughout their involvement in
the system. “It used to be that if a family was struggling to meet their goals, the provider case
manager would call the DHS social worker to take further action,” Ortiz says. “Under IOC, the
CUA team has much more of the responsibility to help families address their challenges. At the
same time, we have more tools to help support the family, tools such as teaming conferences.”
CUA case managers and supervisors were trained with this
in mind, but training is only one step on the path to practice.
During 2013, case managers were sometimes overwhelmed
with families’ needs, which led to a new appreciation of the job
that DHS social workers had been doing all along. “I don’t think
anyone really expected the shift to be as multi-leveled as it is,”
says Oxenburg, NET’s case management director. “The more you
learn, the more you realize you don’t know. But that’s all part of
the learning curve.” This kind of frank and honest discussion was
incredibly helpful to the CUAs that came after NET and APM.
“The workload was very overwhelming at first,” says Enrique
Meletiche, an APM case manager who was previously a foster
care worker. But he likes the holistic approach to families
and having more responsibility. And so do the families. He
tells them he is there to support them in any way he can and
to provide whatever services are needed to help them stay
together or reunify.
Both NET and APM leadership helped staff deal with the stress of rollout. “APM makes us feel
like they care about us,” case manager Maria Morrone says. “They have events and things to
de-stress. It’s the camaraderie; we’re all stressed out together, we’re all in this together.” Stress
at NET and APM eased as case managers gained more experience and as the CUAs hired
additional staff for other positions to support the work.
“I don’t think anyone
really expected the
shift to be as multi-
leveled as it is,” says
Oxenburg, NET’s case
management director.
“The more you learn,
the more you realize
you don’t know. But
that’s all part of the
learning curve.”

Deborah Ellerby’s Story:
A Supervisor’s Take on IOC
NET Community Care was the first CUA to go live with in-home
cases, in January 2013. The first placement case came in April, a
family with 11 children. NET staffers were not expecting such a large
family, and at first, supervisor Deborah Ellerby recalls, they were not
even sure that it was real; maybe it was a mistake or a typo. But it
was very real, and NET’s team of case managers pulled together
and supported this family and all 11 of those children.
“Think about it,” Ellerby says. “There were four foster homes.
There was transportation. They had to get to school and to
doctors’ appointments.”
Even in emergencies – perhaps especially in emergencies – this
team at NET comes together. With IOC, families see they are not
alone. That goes for the team spirit at NET, as well. “In spite of being
overwhelmed, we came together to make this work,” Ellerby says.
Ellerby supervises five case managers. She and a number of her
colleagues transferred to the CUA from NET’s In Home Protective
Services (IHPS) program, where they worked closely with families in
their own homes. With IOC, they take on the full range of child welfare
cases. Moving to IOC brought excitement, anticipation and “a bit of
fear,” Ellerby says, “because now the responsibilities are all on us.”
Ellerby is a fan of IOC’s community focus. She sees how families
respond when their supervised visits with their children are in the
community. “They don’t have to take three buses or five buses. Last
week I met with a family and told them about sites for supervised
visits in the neighborhood, and they said, ‘We know where that is.
We can walk there.’”
Families also feel comfortable walking into the NET offices, a former
church building with stained-glass windows, large stairwells and a
bright new mural in the hallway. “I’m proud when our clients come
in, the way they are treated,” Ellerby says. “We tell parents we want

to help the entire family, even though the issue that brought you
here may be truancy of your 17-year-old son.” CUA case managers
and supervisors ask the families if they need help connecting with
teachers or help with medical problems. They ask if other family
members need help. “Families are very, very receptive once we
put it that way,” Ellerby says.
Transition from the focused, in-home IHPS program to the wider
range of services provided by the CUA was not easy. Placement
cases came quickly and, like the family with 11 children, were often
more complex than anticipated. Ellerby is particularly grateful for the
practice coaches based in NET’s offices – DHS social workers who
are assigned to help each CUA navigate the DHS system.
Ellerby loves the family team conferences that are a centerpiece of
IOC. At first, she says, families are reluctant to go to another meeting.
Sometimes they say they don’t know anyone to bring to the meeting
for support. But once you start talking with them and asking a mom
about her girlfriends or whom she calls when she feels sad, it begins
to work. “You tell them, these are the folks you’re going to bring to
the conference,” Ellerby says. “We really encourage the families to
bring as many as they can, because they are the ones parents can
lean on when we leave.”
IOC is a different way of thinking for Ellerby and her team of case
managers. There is more responsibility, but at the same time there
is more opportunity to make a difference. Social workers often ask
themselves if they have done everything they possibly can for a family.
Ellerby and her team are no exception. But with IOC, more support
systems are built in. And, she adds, “We help educate the family so
they’ll do things differently.”

18 | APRIL 2014
DHS Practice Coaches: Real Time Support
The first year was a start-up operation. Everyone was new at once. That’s why the design of IOC put
DHS staff onsite to offer support. Practice coaches, two per CUA, are seasoned DHS social workers
who are the link between the old system and the new, between training and practice, and sometimes
between confusion and understanding.
Practice coaches know the ropes at DHS and they know the CUAs. If they can’t answer a question
immediately, they know where to go to find out. DHS Deputy Commissioner Vanessa Garrett
Harley says the coaches are particularly important during the transitional period “when the case
managers are still learning the safety model of practice and learning how to do the things that
DHS workers have done for years.” At both APM and NET, the practice coaches are valuable
members of the team.
Carol Hobbs-Picciatto, a practice coach at APM, explains: “We see ourselves as change agents.
We share our experience and practice, helping the case managers through the transition.” She
and Richard Wolfe, the other practice coach at APM, complement each other. Both have years of
experience with DHS. Hobbs-Picciatto brings expertise in domestic violence and medically fragile
children. Wolfe brings expertise with the court unit. They heard about IOC from Commissioner
Ambrose, liked the vision and applied for the job. “It’s a great group of workers at APM,” Wolfe says.
“They are very committed and involved. They bought into this whole vision, and they tap into us as
practice coaches when they need help.”
Walter Lucidi is a practice coach based at NET. “In the beginning,” he says, “I thought I was going to
help navigate the DHS forms, but that’s the least I do now. Without making decisions, I’m showing
them how to be good case managers and help families. I’m building up their confidence. If they feel
stuck, I help them over the hurdle.”
Case managers come to Lucidi with questions about court orders or what to do about a runaway
child or a child placed in emergency treatment. “They are very eager to learn and very eager to get
it right,” he says. In the beginning, Lucidi was a bit nervous about being DHS and sitting at NET. “It’s
like having the enemy on friendly ground,” he joked. But that worry quickly disappeared. He sees
NET as a true learning organization. And he is proud to be part of it.
Tyrone Harvey Jr., the teaming director at DHS, supervises the practice coaches, who
received training from DHS about transitioning from their role as a “doer” to a coach.
“Practice coaches are social workers used to providing services,” Harvey said. “Their
job is coaching now – not making decisions for the case managers but being available
for technical assistance. The decisions are the responsibility of the case managers.”
There is almost universal gratitude for the coaches at both NET and APM. APM
supervisor Lee calls their coaches “awesome. They care about what we do. There’s
nothing that’s watered down. We can take it from them.”
APM case manager Meletiche is also a fan. His first case, an in-home protective case, suddenly
transformed into a placement case when the children needed to be removed. “I was confused about
the process,” he says, and he immediately joined the steady stream of case managers outside the
coaches’ cubicle. “I asked them as many questions as I could, and they directed me the whole way.”
There is almost
universal
gratitude for
the coaches
at both NET
and APM.

APRIL 2014 | 19
Family Team Decision-Making Conferences: The Heart of IOC
“Family team conferences draw on a family’s strengths to help
them move forward and utilize resources in their own family
and their own communities in a way that they can function
independent of child welfare at some point.”
– ROCHELLE COLLINS, FAMILY TEAM CONFERENCE PRACTICE SPECIALIST, NET
Every family in the DHS system has a single case plan that outlines the goals and support
needed to stabilize them. In the past, DHS social workers often developed these plans with
instructions on what parents had to do to close their case and get their children back if they had
been removed. If there was time, the workers got input from the parents while putting the plan
together. But rarely did social workers, parents and a wider support network for the family come
to the table to develop the plan together. “Before, it was a thing where people were making
decisions for the family, and a lot of times clients felt shut out of their own lives,” says APM
supervisor Lee.
With IOC, it is a different story. Family team conferences are held at key decision points
throughout the history of every case. Ideally, the table should be crowded with people from the
formal and informal parts of a family’s life. Participants include parents, youth, the DHS social
worker (until the case is handed over to the CUA), the CUA case manager, relatives, foster
parents, as well as any number of other support people identified by the parents, such as a
teacher, coach, therapist or minister.
A DHS social worker, called a team coordinator, schedules the meetings at a time the family
can come and at a convenient place in the community. A practice specialist, a DHS supervisor
trained to facilitate these conferences, opens every meeting by thanking everyone at the table
for coming and by acknowledging the parents’ expertise in their own family situation and their
children’s lives. The more people at the table, usually, the better for the family. The facilitator
leads a discussion about safety issues, concerns and risks, as well as family members’
strengths and their support networks. Having extra people at the table is a reminder to parents
that they are not alone. In addition, it introduces DHS and CUA staff to the extended family and
the support network that can help the family succeed.
“You have to be aware of everyone at the table,” says facilitator Rochelle Collins, “and you have
to be very balanced in how you engage with the families and all the participants at the table. At
the same time, you have to make sure you identify and address the critical issues and develop
an effective plan.”

20 | APRIL 2014
One Family, One Single Case Plan
A team conference is “like an orchestra,” Lee says. “OK, let’s hear from the violins. Now,
let me hear from the …” When all of the instruments have played, she says, the facilitator
“pulls it together in order to come up with a plan they can all agree on, something the family
can buy into.” This is a huge shift at DHS. Through these conferences, families are learning
they have a voice.
The facilitator posts charts on the wall outlining the strengths and concerns
identified in the conversation. Collins recalls facilitating a meeting with a
teenager who had been basically abandoned by her mother. When the girl
walked into the meeting, she had “a blank affect,” Collins says. “But when
we were charting her strengths, you could see in her face this amazement,
that while all of these very unpleasant things are happening in her life, she still
possesses all of these positive qualities.” When the conference was over, this
teenager took her strengths chart home.
The strengths and concerns voiced by those at the conference inform
the family’s single case plan, the center of every meeting and the guide to
progress. Under IOC, there is no other way to develop a plan than through
these family team meetings.
Plans are specific to each family’s needs and strengths. There should be no
cookie-cutter templates. As DHS Policy Director Bottalla notes, a good case
plan contains “real, concrete things about who’s going to do what to address
the issues that are preventing the kids from going home.” When families help
write their own case plan, they are more likely to meet the requirements. APM
case manager Morrone believes the conferences help build accountability,
“because at the end of the day, we can say, ‘We didn’t make this plan. You
made this plan.’”
The single case plan is revised at every family team conference to reflect
progress and changes in the family’s and children’s lives. Cheryl Pope, Ph.D.,
CUA director at APM, believes families are happy about the conferences. “You
hear a parent saying, ‘Nobody ever asked me what I thought before,’” she
says. “That kind of comment stands out.”
When families
help write
their own case
plan, they are
more likely
to meet the
requirements.
APM case
manager
Morrone
believes the
conferences
help build
accountability,
“because at the
end of the day,
we can say, ‘We
didn’t make this
plan. You made
this plan.’”

APRIL 2014 | 21
Challenges
The goal is for each team coordinator and facilitator eventually to hold three family team conferences
a day. The first set of coordinators and facilitators faced some obstacles, including:
• Finding space in the community that was available when families were available. Both NET
and APM have community partners that share space, but team coordinators cannot usually
schedule meetings all day long in the same room, and they have to build in travel time.
• Inconsistent Internet access at the community partners’ offices. Team coordinators need
the Internet to capture the details of the plans on the DHS template and print them out for the
families so they can walk out the door with their plans in hand.
• Family finding and engaging a support network for parents. Families are encouraged
to bring relatives and others to support them at the meetings, but this was slow to happen.
DHS Teaming Director Tyrone Harvey Jr. points out, “Until we actually get to the conference,
some of the supports are not identified or known to us.” Once they come to one family team
meeting, they are on the list to invite to the others.
Challenges aside, family team conferences put a face on IOC and proved to be popular with families
and CUA staff alike. More than 800 family team conferences were held from February through
December 2013. The numbers began to multiply exponentially in 2014 as more CUAs started taking
cases and by mid-year, approximately 2,400 conferences had been held. Harvey reports that they
hear all the time from families, “I don’t understand why the department didn’t do something like this
sooner.” Harvey’s job in the first year focused mainly on startup issues and troubleshooting. But at
the end of 2013, when he looked back at the progress they had made and the 800 conferences that
were held that year, he said, “That is food to keep hope alive.”
Strengthening Families: Changing Practice from Beginning to End
“Strengthening Families gives caseworkers a way of working
with the parent to look at what helped mom function up until
this point, as opposed to looking only at the moment when she
lost it and we took her child.”
– BRENDA KINSLER, DHS, ADMINISTRATOR OF FAMILY AND YOUTH ENGAGEMENT CENTER, DHS
If family team conferencing is the heart of IOC, another new approach to practice – Strengthening
Families – will be the backbone. Strength-based social work is common parlance in enlightened child
welfare systems today. Walking the talk is another thing. With IOC and Strengthening Families, it can
happen in Philadelphia. Strengthening Families reaches deep into the community to create a network
of support for parents.

22 | APRIL 2014
Strengthening Families grew out of work by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) and
is based on five critical protective factors that help all families and children thrive. The following
factors are the core of Strengthening Families, which is applicable to child welfare as well as
early childhood development, family support and home visiting programs across the country:
• Parental resilience: Helping parents recognize and build on resilience in their own lives.
The question, ‘How did you get through a crisis in the past?’ invites a conversation about
resilience and how to bounce back from difficult situations.
• Social connections: Helping parents identify the people who make up their network of
support. These are the friends, relatives, neighbors and local leaders who can help solve
problems and share parenting advice.
• Concrete support in times of need: Helping parents learn where to get help meeting
basic economic needs such as food and housing, as well as professional support during
a crisis such as domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness.
• Knowledge of parenting and child development: Helping parents understand the
normal developmental stages of their children and respond appropriately.
• Social and emotional competence of children: Helping parents teach their children
how to interact positively with others, communicate their feelings and self-regulate
their behavior.
Strengthening Families puts a face on the meaning of strength-based social
work. Consultant Kathy Goetz Wolf of Be Strong Families points out, “You can’t
ameliorate a deficit without building on a strength. Logically, it’s impossible.
Finding the strengths may be difficult, but the protective factors give you five
areas of strengths to focus on.”
Nilofer Ahsan, who leads the Strengthening Families work nationally for CSSP
and is consulting in Philadelphia, points out that the five protective factors are
important for everyone, not just DHS clients, to function in a stressful society:
“Families in the child welfare system are just like you and me, with maybe harder
life experiences. They need what all of us need.”
Brenda Kinsler, administrator of the Family and Youth Engagement Center at
DHS, is keeper of the Strengthening Families flame and chief champion in charge
of seeing this framework integrated into practice. She, with help from consultants
supported by the national operating foundation Casey Family Programs, is in
charge of spreading the message and providing the necessary training to embed
Strengthening Families into practice through IOC.
Strengthening Families is a formal part of the IOC guidelines now, but integrating
it into the work is still a tall order. DHS investigators will be trained to do safety
assessments differently, for example, actively looking for protective factors to build on. Single
case plans will reflect the protective factors that are discussed in family team conferences.
“Families
in the child
welfare
system are
just like you
and me,
with maybe
harder life
experiences.
They need
what all of
us need.”
– NILOFER AHSAN,
CENTER FOR
THE STUDY OF
SOCIAL POLICY

APRIL 2014 | 23
Parent Cafés: Informal Conversations About Parenting
Parent cafés are the most visible component of Strengthening
Families and the first piece to be launched in Philadelphia. Cafés
are informal, facilitated conversations among parents about issues
important to family life, such as discipline and family relationships.
The cafés are held in the community and led by parents who are
trained to be table hosts and facilitators.
Participants are not identified as being involved with DHS or not;
all are welcome and equal around the table. And yes, there is food
at the cafés, but the idea is to share stories, ideas and advice. As
Kinsler points out, “Mom may have unrealistic expectations about
her kids, but when she comes to a café and hears how other
parents deal with the same situation, her unrealistic expectations
begin to change.” Parents meet other parents in the community
who may become friends and who can help each other.
APM community liaison Kathy Cruz went to a café one night
during her first week on the job. She thought she would stop by
briefly, observe and leave, but she found out quickly that is not
how cafés work. If you are there, you participate on an equal basis
with everyone else. Cruz stayed, and when she left, it was with the
conviction that this was “a powerful tool for parents. I left feeling
like I had made friends and thinking of how I’m going to use this in
my own family. I also left thinking this will be awesome, not only for
APM, but for our city in terms of parents having an opportunity to
share a meal and a conversation.”
Every café ends with a debriefing as participants share what they learned. Comments after a
Mother’s Day café included: “Now I know what the word resilience means.” “I learned I could
ask for help.” “I learned how important it is to have someone to talk to.” “I listened to what the
other parents at the table were saying.”
A parent café sounds like a fun way to build community engagement. It is, but it is much more
than that. It is about integrating protective factors into parents’ lives. And because the setting is
informal, it doesn’t get bogged down in social service jargon. As consultant Goetz Wolf explains,
“It’s a common language that parents and professionals can both learn to speak with each
other.” Because the cafés reach deep into the community, there is a prevention factor here
as well. Parents share resources for help before a problem turns into a crisis.
A parent café
sounds like a
fun way to build
community
engagement.
It is, but it is
much more
than that. It is
about integrating
protective factors
into parents’ lives.
And because
the setting is
informal, it
doesn’t get bogged
down in social
service jargon.

24 | APRIL 2014
Training
The cafés brought a lot of positive energy to IOC in 2013, so much
so that the new CUAs started organizing cafés even before they
formally took on cases. But if DHS and the CUAs expect to infuse
the Strengthening Families framework into their practice – and they
do – staff at all levels must embrace the work and learn the skills to
use it every day. This requires a significant focus on training, which
began in 2013 and will continue well into 2014 and beyond. As
DHS Commissioner Ambrose says, “Strengthening Families is a
framework to reinforce our values as a system, so any training needs
to include these values. And we need to reinforce the values at every
opportunity. We have to orient our supervisors and administrators
about it, too.” This means including specific skill-building tools such
as parent engagement techniques, interview questions that elicit
protective factors with families, and case closing indicators that are
related to protective factors.
To make the approach part of everyday practice, it must be integrated
into Charting the Course, the state-mandated training for all social
workers. Some thought it was too big a leap to ask the state to
change its training program. Ambrose did not hesitate to take on
the assignment, pointing out to state leaders that Strengthening
Families “is very consistent with a lot of the things the state is
promoting, including a strength-based, solution-focused approach to child welfare.” The state
was open to adding Strengthening Families to basic training and by early 2014 had signed off
on the content. As of mid-2014, new CUA or DHS staff taking Charting the Course will receive
training in the Strengthening Families approach. In the meantime, current CUA staff will receive
in-service add-ons.
Rolling Out the Strengthening Families Framework
Training is one thing. Integrating Strengthening Families into actual practice is another. Juanita
Blount Clark from CSSP sees progress in the form of building blocks, some more advanced than
others. “We have done a huge amount of exposure to the protective factors framework,” she
says. “Engaging parents around the cafés is farther along than the integration into casework. We
have not yet equipped the actual worker and supervisor with the sufficient knowledge and skills
to do it. The safety assessment tool needs to have this built in, and the single case plan needs
prompts for the facilitators to use in family conferences.”
Fran Gutterman, senior director at Casey Family Programs, says “There is no handbook for
how to implement the Strengthening Families framework into child welfare practice. The initial
challenge was how to help DHS and the CUAs understand that Strengthening Families was
more than just parent cafés and that viewing the strengths and needs of families through the
lens of protective factors was integral to strength-based work with families.”
“Strengthening
Families is a
framework to
reinforce our values
as a system, so
any training needs
to include these
values. And we
need to reinforce
the values at every
opportunity. We
have to orient our
supervisors and
administrators
about it, too.”
– DHS COMMISSIONER
ANNE MARIE AMBROSE

APRIL 2014 | 25
Practice coaches at the CUAs are key to integration and will get additional training to help case
managers take this new form of practice into the field. Senior learning specialists, who are
DHS supervisors, will coach CUA supervisors on all aspects of their work, including how they
support case managers in integrating Strengthening Families into practice. The first four senior
learning specialists were appointed in January 2014. Strengthening Families training was next
up on their plate.
To help embed Strengthening Families into the work
at the CUA level, each CUA has two Strengthening
Families coordinators, point people for integrating the
framework into practice. These coordinators, along
with the CUA community engagement team, are
often the first point of contact with non-DHS-involved
families in the neighborhood. At first, the coordinators
focused their attention on the development of parent
cafés. But they, too, are now being encouraged
to expand their vision, as Kinsler says, “to ensure
understanding of Strengthening Families from
supervisors and case managers to the case
aides.” She added that DHS is “supporting them in
getting that done.”
Parent Education Groups. The IOC vision includes
supporting families as much as possible in their
own communities, which means moving parenting
education groups from Parent Action Network (PAN)
offices in Center City, where they usually take place,
to the CUA jurisdictions. Parent education groups are
currently run by PAN and are often required as part of
single case plans.
APM is ready to bring these groups to its community. It sponsored a parenting group for
March 2014 that includes both biological parents and foster parents, the first of its kind in
Philadelphia. Kinsler notes, “We have to be in the community, training people and sending
a consistent message that this is how we want to relate to families.” As part of this, the
Strengthening Families leadership team is also working on a 2014 communications campaign
with John Bielenson, a Casey Family Programs consultant. They are linking it to the overall
IOC communication work and then to develop materials for parents at the CUA level, all in the
family-friendly language of a parent café.
To help embed
Strengthening Families
into the work at the CUA
level, each CUA has two
Strengthening Families
coordinators, point
people for integrating the
framework into practice.
These coordinators, along
with the CUA community
engagement team, are
often the ﬁrst point of
contact with non-DHS-
involved families in the
neighborhood.

Community Recruitment in Action:
No Babysitters Needed
CUAs open their doors to the community regularly. One evening
in November 2013, the NET conference room was full of parents,
children and youth, all from the neighborhood. The younger kids
were drawing; the older ones texting. There were cookies, coffee,
snacks for all.
These neighbors came to learn about becoming foster parents
– or resource parents, as they are called in Philadelphia. Maria
Velasquez, NET’s director of recruitment, and Maria Teresa Gamez,
NET’s director of community engagement, welcomed them. The
conversation was mainly in Spanish. A recruiter from NET Foster
Care, another division of the parent organization and one of the
CUA’s subcontracted foster care agencies, was there as well.
The two Marias were upbeat and energetic. Velasquez explained
NET’s philosophy of foster parenting: “You’ve had kids. We’re looking
for lovers of children. But you’re not fostering a child. You’re fostering
a family.” By fostering a family, Velasquez explained, they will learn to
coach and mentor biological parents while taking care of their children
until the family can be reunified. This is a new role for foster parents
in Philadelphia.
Gamez talked about IOC and the goal to bring youth back into their
community from congregate care, which is why they need resource
parents willing to take in teens. She outlined services available for the
youth and promised help for foster parents, too, knowing that it is not
easy to take in teens who have struggled. “NET will be there for you,”
she said. Velasquez added: “You have a team. And remember, you’re
bringing someone into your home who will forever remember you. But
you are not babysitting. You are parenting.”

The parents in the room were engaged. They asked questions: How
long will the children stay? As foster parents, can they still impose a
curfew? What is the training like? What if it doesn’t work out? Will the
payments they get as foster parents affect their food stamps? They
learned DHS had added $300 a month to the base foster parent
stipend for the purpose of meeting the unique needs of teenagers.
At the end of the meeting, a number of the parents took application
forms. To the others, Velasquez said, “If you’re not ready yet, help me
find five people who are.” The next step, formal orientation, is also
held in the community. The goal is to make the process as easy as
possible for these parents.
NET has held a series of these informational meetings. As of early
2014, four parents had already finished training and were being
certified to take children into their homes. Eight more were ready
for an English-language orientation, and 10 were interested in a
Spanish-language orientation.
To help identify potential resource parents, NET recruited a team of
“promoters,” local leaders who know the community well. Gamez
calls these promoters her titi network, titi being Spanish for “auntie,”
the respected elders in the Latino community. NET has seven
promoters who have received training in child abuse and neglect.
NET’s titi network includes one man.

28 | APRIL 2014
Community Engagement: The Face of IOC on the Street
“I think we have to build our relationships. If we’re going to
ask for something, there has to be a relationship. We’re asking
our community to care for these families and children. Change
will come out of these relationships.”
– KATHY CRUZ, COMMUNITY LIAISON, APM
One concept – represented by one word – is a container for the entire package of IOC reforms.
That word is “community.” CUAs are based in the community. Families and children get services
in the community. If children must be removed from their homes, they will be placed in the
community. The same goes for youth who exit congregate care and come back home to their
community. Prevention of abuse and neglect is also part of the community picture, where
parents can get help before a crisis results in a call to the DHS hotline.
IOC is based on the premise that it is possible to build a caring network of support for families
and children in their own neighborhoods. NET Community Engagement Director Gamez, says,
“If I belong to a strong community, chances are that I can have a huge party at the end of the
year and have a lot of fun. But chances are, too, that we can face problems together and get a
better outcome by working as a team.” It is clear to her that the American tradition of minding
your own business does not work when it comes to helping vulnerable families. “So we better
mind our community,” she says.
Community engagement is part of everyone’s job at the CUAs. But NET’s Gamez, APM’s Cruz
and their counterparts at the other CUAs burn the rubber in their neighborhoods. They reach out
to any local nonprofit organization that could be of service to families. They recruit for community
advisory boards, local citizens to share information and advice with CUA staff. They invite local
residents to block parties and community meetings, always handing out information about CUA
activities and always with their eyes open to see who might be interested in becoming foster
parents, especially foster parents willing to take in older youth.
In the first seven months Gamez was at NET, she estimates they reached more than 400
residents to explain IOC and their CUA. She meets neighbors on the bus or at a local event,
finding any opportunity to chat about NET’s work. Community engagement staff members
also talk about DHS, why some families are in the system and how the CUA can help. NET’s
CUA Director Ortiz points out that in their early meetings, community members asked them if
they were from DHS. She answered, “No. We’re with DHS, but we’re not DHS. Then we talk
about safety and permanency and community well-being and what IOC means. People love
the idea of IOC.”

APRIL 2014 | 29
Gamez hears a lot about initiative fatigue in the NET community. She says, “Families here
are tired of people coming and experimenting with them, getting the data and then leaving.”
She responds that NET is this community now. “We are not going anywhere,” she says,
adding that part of NET’s style is to make sure staff asks what people need before asking
for the “big favors.”
Gamez is originally from Latin America and has a background
in international development and communications. Before
coming to NET, she worked in South Philly with Latino
immigrants. Cruz, her counterpart at APM, comes from a
community service and local government background; she
worked for the city councilwoman whose district includes
the organization’s CUA. Gamez and Cruz are outgoing and
energetic, perfectly suited to engage residents in the range
of activities at their CUAs.
To help interest community members in caring for older
youth, Cruz tells people she has a teenage daughter and
talks about the importance of supporting teens. “Even if youth
in the system seem hard or not very comfortable, they need
our support,” she says. “They need to know that we care.
Sharing that information with our community is my goal.”
Community engagement staff members also reach out to the faith-based community for
recruitment. If people in the community hear the call for foster homes from their religious leaders,
Cruz says, “it makes it like, ‘OK, you know what? Maybe I can try this.’ When it comes from your
pastor, your priest or your reverend, it has a different tone.”
The CUA community engagement team includes parent and youth mentors, part-time staff who
have experienced the system first-hand. They can provide support in ways that no staff person
can. And their links go deep into the community.
Heaven Thomas, 21, is a part-time youth mentor at NET. She reaches out to youth, recruiting
for a junior community advisory board and offering advice about education. “Once I have youth
in my sight,” she says, “I start talking about college.” She offers to help with college applications
and tells them she works at NET. Thomas also helps recruit resource parents, especially for
older youth. “I think it’s a shame that so many of these kids are in congregate care,” she says.
“They didn’t ask to be put there.”
Thomas is in college now, a junior majoring in engineering. This is IOC’s idea of a good
role model.
The CUA community
engagement team
includes parent and
youth mentors, part-
time staff who have
experienced the system
first-hand. They can
provide support in
ways that no staff
person can. And their
links go deep into
the community.

30 | APRIL 2014
Growing Pains: The Diﬃcult Dance
of Running Two Systems at Once
“The huge undertaking of running a dual system has been much
more diﬃcult and demanding than I, or I think anybody else
around here, thought it would be in terms of transition to the
new system.”
– VANESSA GARRETT HARLEY, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, DHS
Throughout the first year of implementation, as NET and APM leapt into action with both the
enthusiasm and stress of being first, most of DHS was business as usual, which made for
complex background music to IOC’s first year. The executive leadership team at DHS was in
charge of rolling out IOC, but at the same time they had to keep their eyes on the safety of
children and families still being served in the traditional dual case-management system. Staff
found themselves face to face with a number of interrelated problems:
• When IOC began at NET and APM, a number of DHS staff moved to positions as family
team conferencing facilitators, team coordinators and practice coaches. Their caseload
was divided up among workers still in the old system. By midyear, there were fewer
caseworkers to handle more cases, resulting in higher caseloads.
• DHS caseloads are not organized by level of care, but the CUAs get cases on a
staggered basis, beginning with in-home for the first two CUAs. For DHS workers,
Garrett Harley says, this meant “we were never freeing up anybody, because we were
never clearing one person’s caseload.”
• For families whose cases were flipped from DHS to the CUAs, the DHS worker has
additional responsibilities, including introducing the CUA case manager to the family and
attending one or more family team conferences. “The family needs to know what this
means to them and to have some sort of closure with their DHS worker,” explains DHS
Operations Director Ali. But for workers whose caseloads were already increasing, the
added responsibilities meant added time and, in many cases, added stress.
• At the same time that some DHS workers left for newly created DHS jobs related to
IOC and others struggled with higher caseloads, abuse and neglect reports to the DHS
hotline increased. This was happening across the state, and the majority of the reports
were General Protective Services reports related to neglect and poverty, not Child
Protective Services reports related to physical or sexual abuse. But all reports are taken
seriously at DHS and must be investigated. A backlog of investigations began to appear,
and alarm signals went off at DHS.

APRIL 2014 | 31
With increased caseloads and a backlog of investigations, leaders faced the makings of a
perfect storm. The stress was exacerbated by an ongoing lack of understanding of IOC on the
part of some DHS regional staff. Still embedded in the old system, they saw IOC as separate
and distinct, unrelated to their work. Some questioned the capacity of the CUAs to do the work,
not fully aware of the level of support that DHS was putting in place to train, coach and monitor
CUA staff. Many were also concerned about what would happen to their jobs, even though
DHS promised from the beginning that no staff would be laid off as a result of IOC.
Zeinab Chahine, managing director for strategic consulting at Casey Family Programs, helped
lead system reform in New York City, so she knows about implementation struggles. “To
manage system change on this large a scale requires tremendous attention on the part of
leadership to make sure all the pieces are connected and communicated in a coherent way to
both internal and external partners,” she says. “Adapt and adjust” became the phrase of the
year at DHS and was often heard at meetings where a small group of hardworking DHS leaders
were needed for almost every key decision.
Addressing the Workload and Reducing the Pressure
DHS held fast to the IOC vision and went into troubleshooting mode. Leaders were acutely
aware that all families in the system, whether assigned to a CUA or not, were there because
they needed help. DHS leadership adapted and adjusted:
• They increased the pace of case transfers for all CUAs beginning in early 2014. This
means each CUA gets the full range of cases within six months, instead of a year. The
goal, which they met, was to transfer enough cases to close Ongoing Services Region
(OSR) 2. “The sooner we end running two systems and accelerate the timeline, the
better,” DHS Commissioner Ambrose says.
• DHS hired additional social workers and put them into training in 2013 and early 2014.
They compressed the Charting the Course training period from 12 weeks to eight, but
still kept the required 120 hours. This meant new social workers could be in on-the-job
training earlier.
• Leaders developed an overtime project for case-carrying and non-case-carrying social
workers and supervisors who did investigations, reducing the backlog to zero.
Reflecting on the year, Ambrose says, “The mistakes that we’ve made have been with the best
of intentions. We were very conservative initially, because we wanted to make sure we gave the
CUAs enough time to build the resources. We didn’t want to hand over any cases prematurely
if the CUAs weren’t ready to take care of the kids. Once we started feeling more confident, we
could shift over more cases.”

32 | APRIL 2014
All-Staff Meetings: Listening and Hearing
The DHS leadership team is attentive to those in the department who are not yet engaged in
IOC or who are actively skeptical. Throughout 2013, after all, these workers still carried the bulk
of the system. DHS leaders listened to their concerns and held a series of all-staff meetings in
late September. Everyone who worked for the department was encouraged to attend.
Ambrose opened these meetings by acknowledging the pressure staff was under. “We
appreciate the angst and concern about the unknown,” she told them. “But we really believe
IOC is a better way for children and families.”
The DHS leadership team explained where they were in the transition process, where they were
headed and how long it would take to get there. They acknowledged that they did not have all
the answers but said they were totally committed to the IOC path. When one skeptic argued
that this was a place where no one had gone before, staff explained that other states had, in
fact, successfully implemented similar reforms, that the two leading foundations in the field were
behind IOC and that IOC had been years in the making with participation of stakeholders from
across the city. “We don’t intend to fail,” Ambrose said, as she reiterated to staff that they would
be just as valuable in the new system as in the old one.
The bottom-line message: Relief is in sight. And indeed it was. With CUAs 3, 4 and 5 in action
in the first quarter of 2014, the cases transferred from DHS to the community were multiplying
fast. The turning point will come in the summer of 2014, when approximately half the cases will
be transferred to the CUAs. DHS hopes shutting down OSR 2 will help ease the stress within the
ranks; this is the region where cases overlap most with the first three CUAs. This means remaining
DHS staff there can be redeployed to support OSR 1 and 3 or take other jobs at DHS or with IOC.
The progress of case transfer – relief for DHS social workers – looks like this:
Dec 2013 Mar 2014 June 2014 Sept 2014 Dec 2014
82% 68% 53% 44% 34%18% 32% 47% 56% 64%
Non-IOC Cases IOC Cases Linear (Non-IOC Cases)
* These are our estimated projections

APRIL 2014 | 33
Who Does What at DHS in IOC
Not all DHS jobs will change under IOC. The entire front end remains under DHS jurisdiction
and will be strengthened with additional staff to attain lower caseloads for all. This includes the
hotline, investigations (intake) and specialty investigations, which include sex abuse, truancy and
the unit that handles repeat abuse reports and new reports on CUA-involved cases. Ongoing
social workers and their line supervisors will be able to apply for these positions.
There will be other job opportunities at DHS directly related to IOC:
• DHS directors and administrators can apply for leadership jobs focused on family
team conferences.
• DHS social workers can become practice coaches assigned to the CUAs.
• DHS supervisors can become senior learning specialists assigned to the CUAs
to coach supervisors who in turn coach their case managers.
• DHS supervisors can become practice specialists and facilitate family
team conferences.
• DHS social workers can become team coordinators, working with practice specialists
to schedule family conferences, help families get their relatives and others to conferences
and record the details of the discussions that lead to single case plans.
• Performance Management and Accountability Unit will be adding program analyst
positions to enhance monitoring and accountability of the CUAs.
• Quality visitation reviewers, currently contracted out, are being brought back
in-house. These social workers and supervisors will handle family visits to ensure
that CUA case managers are doing what they say they are doing.
• The Court Unit will be enhanced with more social workers to handle CUA
legal questions.
Other opportunities are also in development for current DHS staff.

34 | APRIL 2014
A Push to Communicate:
All Roads Lead Home
The all-staff meetings, which were repeated
in 2014, were part of an effort by DHS
leaders to communicate more consistently
with staff across the department about
IOC. To support this effort on a regular
basis, the DHS communications office set
up an IOC website for all staff and posts
monthly newsletters.
Getting staff to check the website,
especially when their jobs don’t require it,
is an ongoing challenge. But one major
communications component really took off
in 2013, a campaign called All Roads Lead
Home, which connects IOC to goals for
families and children. A poster illustrates
the path to permanency via IOC. DHS
Communications Director Alicia Taylor says
the popularity of this poster was unlike
anything she had seen in her five years
at DHS. Anyone walking the halls of DHS
cannot miss this poster; it is placed in prime
spots throughout the building. “We couldn’t
print them fast enough,” says Taylor, who
realized that “a very small idea can turn out
to have a big impact.” Staff sometimes feel
bombarded with information, and there are
so many components of IOC, she says,
but “the phrase ‘All Roads Lead Home’
resonates and the image says it all.”
Another internal communications campaign is linked more specifically to
concerns and questions expressed by DHS staff. In the summer of 2013,
small posters titled “Did You Know?” began appearing on every floor at
DHS, next to and inside elevators and conference rooms and in the halls.
Each in the series addresses a practical issue, such as when the newly
hired social workers would actually be on the job and getting Wi-Fi in the
courthouse. The message to staff was clear: We hear you. In the long run,
IOC spells relief to overworked DHS staff. And it will be better for families.
?DIDYOUKNOW
28 new staff will be in
the ﬁeld by October.
More help is on the way.
WE HEAR YOU!
ALL ROADS
LEAD HOME
Improving Outcomes
for Children
IDENTIFICATION OF KIN
AND RECRUITMENT OF
RESOURCE FAMILIES
KIN AND
FAMILY
REUNIFICATION
WITH PARENTS
FOSTER &
ADOPTIVE
FAMILIES
HOTLINE
AND
INTAKE
PLACEMENT STABILITY
PERMANENCY
FAMILY SUPPORT
CHILD SAFETY CONFERENCE
TEAMING CONFERENCES
YOUTH
REMAIN HOME
WITH SUPPORTS
CONGREGATE CARE
RIGHT-SIZING
STRENGTHENING
FAMILIES FRAMEWORK
DHS hotline number:
(215) 683-6100
Visit the IOC website:
www.phila.gov/dhs
Click on IOC link

APRIL 2014 | 35
Congregate Care and a Four-pronged Approach to Right-sizing
At a citywide steering committee meeting in July, Joe
Lavoritano from Catholic Social Services (CUA 4) reported
that 34 percent of the children in its jurisdiction were living
in congregate care. The CUA sees this as an “opportunity,”
he said. DHS Commissioner Ambrose and DHS Operations
Director Ali responded, in unison, “We do, too.”
In 2013, DHS and the CUAs rallied around a statistic: 22.6, which represented the percent of
DHS children living in congregate care. More than 300 of these youth in congregate care were
outside the five-county region, 127 of them more than 150 miles away. Research shows that
children who grow up in institutions are severely challenged as adults. To have 22.6 percent of
their children and youth in congregate care was simply unacceptable to child welfare leaders
in Philadelphia.
At the beginning of 2013, the 22.6 percent statistic represented approximately 1,000 children
and youth, almost all of them teenagers. With IOC, DHS is focused on “right-sizing” congregate
care. The national average is 14 percent, but DHS wants to reduce congregate care below
that in Philadelphia. The CUAs are partners at every stage of this effort to bring youth back
to their communities.
An Annie E. Casey Foundation report on congregate care in Philadelphia urged DHS to shore
up its continuum of services with more prevention and intensive in-home services on the front
end. The report also recommended expansion of treatment foster care, better family finding and
engagement, and stronger after-care services to support children returning home. These goals
are right in line with IOC. The foundation is providing technical assistance around all areas of
congregate care reduction.
DHS leaders realize that some percentage of young people need long-term residential care,
particularly medically fragile children and youth who cannot be supported in the home. But
residential treatment for mental health or substance abuse issues should be short-term only and
available immediately, not next week or next month. Keeping youth in congregate care for years
at a time, Ambrose says, is a favor to no one. “When I have an institutional waiting list it makes
me insane,” she says. “Those who need treatment should get it with no delay.” Research shows
that the benefits of treatment are reached within months, not years. And it is clear that growing
up in an institution does not prepare youth for responsible adulthood.

36 | APRIL 2014
In Philadelphia, truancy automatically triggers a dependency report and a court hearing and
is often a direct pipeline to congregate care. Some judges, not seeing other options, believe
they are doing youth a favor by ordering congregate care and sending them away. NET’s CUA
Director Ortiz has another plan for truancy in their community: “We would love to reach youth
before they get to DHS, before they’ve been truant for so long that they’re in court.” This means
working with the schools and with the behavioral health community, another element in the
large-scale IOC strategy.
Congregate care is the most expensive component of the child welfare
system. In Philadelphia, group homes cost $155 per day. Other forms
of congregate care range from $150 to $250 per day and up for
medically fragile children. Foster care is $600 a month, now $900 a
month for teens, plus administrative costs that go to the foster care
agencies. Saving money is a welcome benefit of reducing congregate
care, but DHS leaders focus more on the personal cost to children
who grow up with no family. If congregate care is reduced, many
of these children will keep the connections that are so important to
becoming mature adults, and DHS and the CUAs can use the savings
to add to the community-based services that are so critical to keeping
youth out of institutions.
In 2013, DHS instituted a four-pronged strategy aimed at reducing the overutilization of
congregate care:
1. Mandated approval by the commissioner before any child can be sent
to congregate care.
2. Decreased use of emergency shelters.
3. Expedited permanency meetings for youth who have been in long-term congregate
care with a goal of bringing them back to the community.
4. Recruitment of foster homes, particularly treatment foster homes and homes
for older youth in the community.
The courts are a complicating factor in resolving this issue. If a judge orders congregate care, their
ruling holds unless DHS or the CUAs ask for a motion of reconsideration. In the past, judges did
not see a range of options other than congregate care for some of the youth who came before the
courts. With IOC, the intent is to expand the options in the community.
The work on congregate care is paying off, and there is good news to report. No longer is
22.6 the statistic to focus on. By the end of 2013, congregate care placements were down to
20 percent of the total children in care and by mid-2014, the number dropped to 18%. This
was true despite an increase in DHS hotline reports and an increase in the number of children
and youth in the system. It is progress to build on as leaders and staff work to safely get the
numbers down even further.
Saving money is a
welcome beneﬁt of
reducing congregate
care, but DHS
leaders focus more
on the personal
cost to children
who grow up with
no family.

APRIL 2014 | 37
Commissioner’s Approval Process
An obvious first step in reducing congregate care is to prevent it in the first place. DHS
Commissioner Ambrose instituted a requirement that all recommendations for congregate care
must go through her office for approval. This requires workers to provide better information
and look for family resources that could avoid congregate care. Between November 2012
and October 2013, the commissioner and her staff examined more than 1,200 referrals to
congregate care; one quarter of them were denied.
Decreasing Use of Emergency Shelters
Teens who enter the system, particularly because of truancy, are often sent to shelters for a
30-day emergency placement. From there, if there is no family-focused placement or no beds
in a congregate care facility where they can get the treatment and support they need, youth
often go to another shelter. Decreasing the use of shelters is thus an ideal way to interrupt the
congregate care pattern.
At the beginning of 2013, DHS was using nine shelters, some in the city, others in the
surrounding counties. Keeping in mind the IOC goal of placement within the community,
DHS targeted shelters outside the city first. Another candidate is in Philadelphia, but it
mainly supports homeless adults with transitional housing and
workforce development; DHS rarely uses this shelter for its
teens any more.
That leaves four shelters still in use for the time being. As DHS
Operations Director Ali notes, “I have some anxiety about
stopping the contracts with some of the other shelters because
we haven’t yet found enough foster parents willing to take
these youth.” Ali added that “youth who go to emergency
shelters are in crisis, so they may not be appropriate for
general foster care or even treatment foster care at the time.”
But she added that these youth could be stabilized instead
of being moved from shelter to shelter. In fact, DHS is working
with staff at the city’s Community Behavioral Health (CBH)
organization to put a satellite office in one of the shelters
to support these youth.
Another effort is to make sure youth in shelters are able to continue their education and that
their credits count. Many of the teens who end up in shelters were truant for some time, and
the public schools in the shelter neighborhoods are reluctant to accept these youth. The DHS
Educational Support Center is working to find solutions.
Many of the teens
who end up in shelters
were truant for some
time, and the public
schools in the shelter
neighborhoods are
reluctant to accept
these youth. The DHS
Educational Support
Center is working to
ﬁnd solutions.

38 | APRIL 2014
Expedited Permanency Reviews
for Youth in Long-term Care
With so many youth in congregate care for so long, another
intervention is to look closely at each case and ask how many
really need to remain there. Sometimes if youth are safe and
not causing trouble, busy social workers move on to the next
family’s crisis and the youth stay in place. Tracey Feild, director
of the Child Welfare Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, says, “Unless you really pay attention to it, the
system just slows down and these kids get left behind. And
before you know it, they’ve aged out of care and they haven’t
lived with a family or had contact with a family for years and
years.” This is not the way DHS wants youth to grow up.
To get a handle on who can leave congregate care, DHS began
holding expedited permanency reviews in 2013, team meetings
for youth who have been in congregate care for more than
four months, but less than two years. Youth in institutional care
longer than this are more likely to have lost touch with viable permanent family resources in the
community. Lyris Younge, congregate care integrity officer at DHS, is in charge of the expedited
permanency review process, which creates a transition plan for each youth. The process
looks like this:
• Facilitators study a youth’s file, interview the social worker and then meet with the youth
at the institution where he or she is housed. Together they create a list of family and
extended family members who are or have been important to the youth. In Philadelphia,
some children were able to go home just from this first step alone.
• The facilitators reach out to the people on the list, including parents, even if their rights
have been terminated. Often youth remain in contact with them. Facilitators ask biological
parents if there are other relatives or people who might be available to help.
• Key members of this group are invited to an expedited permanency meeting with
the youth. The DHS social worker attends, and in many cases, behavioral health and
education specialists are also invited.
• The team creates a transitional plan designed to move the youth back to his or her own
family or to another family-like setting in the community, with support services in place.
• The goal is a successful transition out of congregate care within 60 to 90 days
of the meeting.
“We need to start thinking out of the box in terms of what placements work for these kids,”
Younge says. Of the first 42 expedited permanency meetings held in 2013, 18 youth left
congregate care for a family or family-like setting, and a number of others were making home
visits in preparation for transitioning out. The first group of expedited permanency meetings was
not geographically targeted. The next group will target youth whose homes of origin are in the
first four CUA jurisdictions.
“Unless you really pay
attention to it, the
system just slows down
and these kids get left
behind. And before
you know it, they’ve
aged out of care and
they haven’t lived with
a family or had contact
with a family for years
and years.”
TRACEY FEILD, DIRECTOR OF THE
CHILD WELFARE STRATEGY GROUP
AT THE ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION

APRIL 2014 | 39
Success Is in the Details. Younge described a permanency meeting for a young woman, 17
years old. She didn’t look at anyone when she came into the room and hardly spoke during her
meeting. Her mother, however, was very outspoken and extremely negative. “The mother went
on a tirade about how awful this kid was, that she would never amount to anything,” Younge
says. “We saw this kid just deflate.”
Younge was not hopeful about the outcome of this meeting, but in the debriefing afterwards,
she learned that the mother was the youth’s adoptive mother. The DHS worker thought
the biological mother might be living in Erie, Pennsylvania but had not brought it up in the
permanency meeting because her parental rights had been terminated.
It turns out this young woman had a lot of family in Erie. The next step was to find them. The
only phone number the teenager had for her mother was disconnected. In this case, Facebook
came to the rescue and DHS found her father. He had a working number for the mother.
DHS held another permanency meeting, this time with members
of her biological family. “When this young woman came in
knowing that she might possibly be reconnected with her family,
she was like a different person,” Younge says. After the meeting,
they began visits. Both the mother and father, who were no
longer together, were very supportive.
Home visits in 2013 were successful, and the young woman
left her congregate care institution for Erie in early 2014. She
is in school there and is doing well. Without an expedited
permanency meeting and attention to detail – and in this
case, without the benefits of social media – this young woman
was destined to remain in an institution until she aged out
of the system.
Recruitment of Resource Homes in the Community
When Daisy Rosa, quality assurance director at APM, first arrived on the job and began to
develop subcontracts with foster care agencies, she asked for a list of foster homes in their two
police districts. The list was short: one. “I was like, OK,” she said. “Well that’s an opportunity, a
gold mine. There’s a lot of work for us.”
In fact there are many “opportunities,” as Rosa puts it, when it comes to recruitment, and the
CUAs and DHS are looking at numerous strategies. “Foster parents should be treated like stars,”
says Feild of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “They are the most important resource we have
in child welfare, and yet recruitment and foster parent support are two of the least attended-to
functions in a system.”
Without an expedited
permanency meeting
and attention to detail
– and in this case,
without the beneﬁts
of social media – this
young woman was
destined to remain
in an institution
until she aged out
of the system.

40 | APRIL 2014
In the past, foster care agencies in Philadelphia didn’t feel a demand to recruit beds in the
community for teens. DHS didn’t ask for it. Teens who came into the system were often
automatically placed in congregate care. Youth were told they were “too old” for placement with
a foster family. As Chris Behan, senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, says, “You
have to demand what you need in order to make change happen in a system.” And if you need
families to take in teens, you have to demand that they be recruited and trained and give them
the support to do the job well.
In Philadelphia, targeted recruitment is high on the IOC priority list. DHS sponsored a town hall
in May 2013 and invited community members as well as the CUAs and other nonprofit groups
that support children in care. DHS Commissioner Ambrose told the group, “We want community
members to step up and open their homes and hearts to kids in foster care.” She pointed out
that DHS especially needs homes for teens and that the department is adding $300 a month
to the standard foster care payment to support the everyday necessities for teens. Most foster
parents do not take children into their homes for the money, she said, but “teens need sneakers
and clothes. And they are always hungry.”
In the fall, DHS Communications Director Taylor
coordinated a 2½-hour televised phone bank with
the No. 1 station in the Philadelphia market, 6ABC.
DHS and provider staff fielded the calls – joined
by Philadelphia Eagles star Jeremy Maclin – and
more than 200 people called to get information
about becoming resource parents. The station did
news stories about foster care during the day and
a follow-up story the next day.
DHS and the CUAs are learning to identify the
children who need homes and to recruit foster
parents for those children. To support teens, this
means finding foster parents who are willing to get
the additional training for treatment foster care in order to take in older youth who are exiting
residential care. The other side of the equation means ensuring there is adequate support for
those foster parents and that it is available outside of business hours. Crises with teens rarely
take place between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Recruitment and resource development are big goals across the system. DHS is adding a
senior-level staff person and a new office – the Resource Development Office – to oversee
this part of IOC. As DHS Deputy Commissioner Clapier says, “We know what resources
we need. We need foster homes. And we need supported services for teens. And we need
evidence-based practices.”
In Philadelphia, targeted
recruitment is high on the
IOC priority list. DHS
sponsored a town hall in
May 2013 and invited
community members as
well as the CUAs and other
nonproﬁt groups that
support children in care.

APRIL 2014 | 41
Bringing the Voices of Youth to the Highest Levels of DHS
Tackling the problem of congregate care in Philadelphia takes planning, political will and
inspirational leadership. It also takes listening. Who better understands congregate care than
the youth who spend so much time there?
Margarita Davis-Boyer, coordinator for older youth services at DHS, is just one of the
inspirational leaders determined to make a difference in the lives of youth in the system. She
knows first-hand what it means to grow up in the system, but she stayed in school and got
her master’s degree in social work.
Davis-Boyer’s job description is broad, with a lot of room for innovation. She helps youth in
the system speak out about what they need. She assesses youth-focused DHS programs to
ensure that they are strength-based and beneficial. She connects with youth directly, one on
one and in groups. She makes sure they get the support and services they need – and that
they stay in school.
“I love building rapport with the youth, to let them know that someone’s in their corner,”
Davis-Boyer says. These are just a few of her accomplishments in her first year on staff at DHS:
• She helped expand the reach of the Achieving Independence Center (AIC), which offers
life skills classes to youth, including support around education, employment and housing.
In the past, AIC was offered to youth 16 and up. Now there is a Young AIC, welcoming
14- and 15-year olds.
• She speaks to young people in the system at AIC graduations and any other occasion
where she can celebrate them. “A lot of times, youth are only acknowledged when they
do something negative,” she says. “We want to empower and encourage our youth to
keep on doing really wonderful things.”
• She coordinated the first-ever Youth Summit in Philadelphia, which brought together
teens in the system from across the city to hear from one another, to hear from – and
speak to – DHS leaders, and to get practical advice on navigating support systems that
help them move toward independence. Youth set the agenda for this two-day meeting.
• She helped produce a town hall to recruit foster parents for older youth and prepared
teens to speak and perform there.
• She speaks regularly to the press and media and focuses on the need for community
foster homes for older youth in congregate care.

Tondalaya’s Story: When
Education Spells Resilience
Most child welfare agencies struggle with how best to serve teens
in the system. With IOC, Philadelphia is making this population a high
priority for services and placement in the community. Listening to the
experiences of youth is an important first step in practice change.
Tondalaya is 19 years old, in college now. At 18, she opted to remain
in the Philadelphia foster care system. She was born in New York and
first entered foster care there. She moved to Philadelphia when she
was 12, and at 16 she ran away from her parents’ home. She ended
up in a youth shelter and then a group home where she was one of
16 girls, eight on each floor. Tondalaya is quiet and studious. She
kept to herself in the group home, but the other girls picked on her.
At 17, she left that group home and was sent to another, and then
she bounced around several family foster homes. What she wants
now is to be adopted by her godsister, who is 26.
Restrictions rule the lives of teens in foster care. Tondalaya believes
these teens want the normal life of any teen: the right to go to
slumber parties, money for the prom, realistic curfews. “There’s no
reason why when I was 17 years old, I still had to come back to the
group home at 8 o’clock,” she says. She adds that the key to finding
out what teens want – any teen – is simply to ask them. “You have to
give us a voice,” she says, something DHS is more attentive to now
than ever before.
Tondalaya is relatively complimentary about DHS, but she has had at
least 10 caseworkers from DHS and the provider agencies assigned
to her case. She can’t even remember all of their names. Resilience,
in Tondalaya’s case, came from her desire to get an education. “If I’m
ever going to achieve anything and be better than the people that I

wished I was not related to, I can’t count on somebody else to build
me up when times get rough,” she says. “My education is all I have.”
What got her through the “trying times,” as she puts it, were her
school, her teachers and counselors, and also realizing that “it’s OK
to go home and cry; it’s OK to let it all out so you can wake up the
next day and start all over again.”
The Achieving Independence Center (AIC), which offers life skills
classes to teens, also made a difference to Tondalaya, helping her
hold onto her education dreams. “AIC helped me accomplish things I
never even thought I could accomplish myself,” she says. When she
felt negative about herself or about school, they persuaded her to
stick with it. She explains: “They were like, ‘You’re meant for school.
If anybody in here is college-bound, it’s you.’”
A freshman at Lincoln University now, she is going for a double major
in communications and biology. One of her recent foster parents told
her that her ambitions were too high and that she couldn’t afford
to go to college. To this, Tondalaya responded: “I don’t care if I can
afford it or not. I just want my education.” And when people tell her
a double major is too much, she answers: “No, it’s really not. Would
you rather me smoke weed and have sex with everybody, or would
you rather get me the education I want? Personally, I believe if I’m
double majoring in two very hard fields, I’m not gonna have time to
talk to anybody.”

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