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Santa Fe, NM — Welfare Reform — Special Topics — Home
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Linking Child Protective Workers with Substance Abuse Counselors:
Delaware's Title IV-E Child Welfare Waiver
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)
Division of State and Community Assistance
State Team-Building Workshop
on
Welfare Reform
Hilton of Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
October 29-30, 1997
In the last five years, the Division of Family Services has seen a significant increase in the number of children entering foster care because of parental substance abuse. Parental substance abuse is now a factor in more than 50% of the children coming into care and foster care costs for these children constitute over 70% of total foster care costs. Parental substance abuse is a factor in 60 to 85% of the cases receiving child protective treatment services. If child protective workers are going to effectively service families experiencing both child abuse or neglect and substance abuse, they must have ready access to substance abuse evaluation and treatment services.
In June, 1996 the Delaware Division of Family Services received the first child welfare waiver which allowed the use of Title IV-E foster care funds to implement a three to five year demonstration project. The demonstration project consists of two essential components which ensure permanency for children - the use of multi-disciplinary treatment teams composed of social workers and substance abuse counselors to work with families where parental substance abuse is causing risk to children - and subsidized guardianship.
The multi-disciplinary treatment team component allows Delaware to demonstrate the use of multi-disciplinary teams composed of child protective workers and substance abuse counselors. The objectives of the project are to:
- Prevent or delay entry of children into out-of-home care because of parental substance abuse or reduce the time in care in 50% of the families receiving multi-disciplinary team services
- Reduce the amount of time between identification of a substance abuse problem and completion of an evaluation and subsequent treatment
- Ensure permanency for children by verifying that reasonable efforts have been made to prevent placement and that appropriate reunification services have been made available
This new approach to delivering child welfare services collocates contracted substance abuse staff with child protective staff. Working as a team, the child protective worker focuses on protective and safety issues while depending on the substance abuse counselor to address the substance abuse issues. Together, they assess the seriousness of the substance abuse problem and the impact on the parents' ability to provide adequate care for the children in the home. Both work to connect the family with community resources to promote safety. The substance abuse counselor completes an evaluation, assists the family in connecting with treatment resources and provides support and treatment during the early stages of treatment .
An extensive evaluation is being utilized to ensure that the project is cost neutral to the federal government and to evaluate both the process and the outcome of the project. The project utilizes random assignment of cases to control and demonstration units. Outcomes and costs of foster care from control units are being compared to the demonstration units. Early evaluation results indicate that the project is reducing foster care costs in the units with substance abuse counselors. Efforts to measure effectiveness in improving outcomes for children are currently underway and will be available in the near future.
For more information, contact:
Candace R. Charkow
Treatment Program Manager
Division of Family Services
Department of Services for Children,
Youth and Their Families
1825 Faulkland Road
Wilmington, DE 19805
302-633-2601
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