Vol. 13, No. 2
March 2008

Creating a Vision and Strategic Plan to Support NC's Child Welfare Supervisors

Supervisors carry the burden of making sure that family-centered child welfare practice happens. The NC Division of Social Services wants to help supervisors with this task. That’s one of the reasons it has invited supervisors from county departments of social services and other stakeholders to join with it to create a strategic plan to strengthen supervision in North Carolina.

Supervision Work Group
Agencies responded enthusiastically to this invitation. Today there are representatives from more than 20 counties on the Child Welfare Supervision Work Group, many of them frontline child welfare supervisors.

The group, which began meeting monthly in October 2007, is laying the groundwork for a new vision and strategic plan for supervision in North Carolina. It is assessing the current culture of child welfare supervision, exploring the gap between stated expectations of supervisors and the actual practice of supervision, and discussing how the training provided to supervisors could be improved. Staff from the National Resource Center for Organizational Improvement and the National Resource Center for Child Welfare Data and Technology are facilitating the strategic planning process.

The Strategic Plan
Although they are still in the early stages, the group believes the strategic plan they produce will clarify the supervisor’s role with regard to data and outcomes and identify ways supervisors can most effectively impact casework practice. Consistency of practice across the state is another area the strategic plan will address, especially as it relates to the staffing of common case decision points, the review of documentation, the frequency of individual and group supervision, and the levels of supervision and professional development supervisors themselves receive.

This strategic plan is a key part of our state's federal Program Improvement Plan.

Questions about the work group? Contact the Division’s Candice Britt (919/733-9467, candice.britt@ncmail.net).