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Lessons Learned #3

Commitment, self-awareness and flexibility are the core, professional characteristics that need to be understood, developed and continually fine-tuned for a child welfare workforce to become centered on authentic engagement with children and youth.

The Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency (QIC-EY) is producing a series of Lessons Learned to share fundamental insights about engagement of children and youth, especially in relation to permanency decisions. Each lesson brings to life insights and knowledge gained as the QIC-EY project progresses.

The Lesson

Commitment, self-awareness and flexibility are the core, professional characteristics that need to be understood, developed and continually fine-tuned for a child welfare workforce to become centered on authentic engagement with children and youth.

The Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency (QIC-EY) literature review has found and identified these three characteristics plus nine competencies that facilitate child welfare workers’ ability to engage authentically with children and youth. The QIC-EY defines characteristics as the helpful, internal traits that workers may bring to their work in varying capacities. In an environment where hiring a workforce that embodies all of the critical characteristics is challenging, child welfare systems need to find ways to prioritize commitment, self-awareness and flexibility and to create opportunities for their professionals to develop and to fine-tune these characteristics. They also need to remove barriers that might make prioritizing relationship building with children and youth difficult to achieve.

Commitment

Commitment provides a strong foundation for building authentic relationships. Leaders should communicate to professionals the value of such engagement with children and youth and set the tone for the level of commitment that is expected for authentic engagement when core principles are expressed.

Self-awareness

Critical to successful system change surrounding authentic engagement with children and youth is the ability of individual professionals to acknowledge that their own biases, styles, values, life experiences and idiosyncrasies can impact relationship building. Leaders should encourage attention to self-awareness to help child welfare professionals work with children and youth from different backgrounds.

Flexibility

Organizational cultures that are open to creative and individualized problem-solving encourage child welfare professionals to be more flexible in their approaches to working with children and youth. Transformational leaders should elevate engagement with children and youth in their operation and clear a path for staff members to be flexible in how they meet the needs of children and youth.

Application of the Lesson

Long-lasting system change related to authentic engagement with children and youth becomes more feasible when system leaders place value on relationships and prioritize the continual development of these three characteristics in the child welfare workforce.

While the work of the QIC-EY will continue during the next several years, the following applications can help agencies and organizations now to prioritize, to develop and to fine-tune continually the three most important characteristics tied to relationship building between professionals and the children and youths in their care.

Your agency or organization can start by understanding the definitions of the three core characteristics and by thinking critically about what they mean to you and your staff.

Commitment

As the leader, you set the tone for the level of commitment that is expected for authentic engagement when you clearly express the core principles and ask your team members individually and collectively to commit to the following:

  1. a system of belief that all children and youth with whom they work can achieve legal, relational and cultural permanency;
  2. solution-oriented approaches that provide opportunities to be creative in finding ways to engage with children and youth, even when a child or a youth seems to reject support; and
  3. a process in place that allows your staff members to brainstorm with their peers when they encounter children or youths with whom they are struggling to engage in discussions related to permanency.
See the Commitment tool

Self-awareness

Being self-aware helps child welfare professionals to prevent projecting their own feelings onto children and youth. By taking the following actions, you as the leader can set the tone for how your workforce engages in self-reflection:

  1. Offer a training that helps your team members explore the art of sharing their own life experiences while not projecting their own feelings or beliefs onto the children and youths in their care.
  2. Identify power imbalances that exist between professionals and children and youth in your agency or organization. Then find ways to alleviate these imbalances.
  3. Develop policies and tips to help child welfare professionals learn how to establish boundaries between their work and their personal lives.
See the Self-awareness tool

Flexibility

As a transformational leader committed to elevating engagement with children and youth in your operation, clear a path for your staff members to do the following:

  1. Change approaches based on the particular needs of an individual child or youth.
  2. Encourage different methods for children and youth to participate (e.g., writing, talking, drawing, listening to music) so that they can contribute to decisions being made about them in a manner that fits their needs.
  3. Let your child welfare professionals proceed at each child or youth’s own pace, which might impact some standard time frames and protocols. Support your professionals by allowing time for trust to develop in their relationships with the young persons in their care.
See the Flexibility tool

Deeper connections with children and youth become possible when the characteristics of commitment, self-awareness and flexibility are established by leadership within an agency or an organization. The QIC-EY’s tools can help you and your staff members continue on the journey toward more authentic engagement with children and youth.

To check out the literature review where these characteristics were identified, click here. To find the first two QIC-EY Lessons Learned, click here. Stay tuned for the September 2023 release of QIC-EY Lessons Learned (Vol. 1, No. 4), which will focus on the nine competencies identified in the literature review.

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