CPPC in P

olk County

Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) is an approach that neighborhoods, towns, cities and states can adopt to improve how children are protected from abuse and neglect. It aims to blend the work and expertise of families, professionals and residents to bolster supports for vulnerable families and children.

CPPC is not a program; it is a way to bring members of the community together to be more inviting, strengths & needs based, accessible and relevant. It incorporates prevention strategies, as well as strategies needed to address abuse and neglect that have already been identified.

Principles

• Families are stronger when all members, including caregivers, are safe from abuse.
• There is no substitute for strong families to ensure that children and youth grow up to be capable adults.
• Families need supportive communities to help them be strong.
• Children can best be kept safe when families, friends, residents and organizations work together as partners.
• Children should stay with their own families, whenever possible.
• Services and supports need to be available earlier, before crises occur and must be closely linked to the communities in which families live.
• Government alone, through the child protective services (CPS) agency, cannot keep children safe from abuse and neglect.
• Efforts to reduce abuse and neglect must be closely linked to broader community initiatives and priorities.
• All families should receive high-quality services, with no disparities among racial, ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic groups.
• Each community must shape the strategies and network of services based on its own resources, needs and cultures. Residents of different communities will come up with different ways of putting these principles into actions.

Four Strategies

1. Individualized Practice

This practice represents a family-centered service delivery that stresses partnership among families and their support systems, formal and informal. Sites work toward serving at least half of the families involved in the child protection system through individualized practice. For families who are not involved with the public child welfare system, sites serve at least half the number with individualized practice. Individualized plans are developed in conjunction with a team meeting, which includes the family, individuals from the family's own support systems, and representatives of the more formal systems involved, such as schools, counselors, and family support organizations. To ensure that the practice is of high quality, all jurisdictions incorporate a Quality Service Review (QSR) of a sample of cases. The QSR is a powerful self-evaluation tool, helping child welfare and social services agencies assess the effectiveness of their practices and the interventions provided to the families the serve. It helps agencies learn how families are doing and which service functions are working. Because the QSR's are directly tied to the core components of individualized practice - engagement, assessment, planning, implementation, and results - each QSR measures the degree to which true individualized and participatory practice is occurring with families.

2. Neighborhood Network

Sites enlist key players from other service systems to ensure that families get the help they need. These partner systems include domestic violence services, substance abuse treatment, mental health services, emergency economic assistance and many others. In addition, sites direct intensive support to high-risk families to prevent child abuse and neglect. Residents are enlisted to serve as mentors to new parents, tutors to children and to offer help to neighbors, relatives and friends. Each site has one or more "hubs" or family resource centers where families can go and feel welcome, accessing a variety of services and supports.

3. Policy & Practice Change

Sites have made several important changes in their CPS systems: they collect and analyze CPS administrative data to determine the trends in the neighborhoods they are serving and use this data to drive their decision making; CPS staff cross-train, shadow, co-locate and jointly work with staff from the domestic violence service system, mental health treatment centers and substance abuse treatment facilities to better serve families with multiple and complex needs; CPS workers serve as safety consultants for residents and other agencies to build a strong, positive presence in the neighborhoods being served through the partnership approach; and CPS is increasing it's attention to families who cycle through the CPS system repeatedly.

4. Shared Decision Making

Each site's decision-making body uses evaluation information to inform decisions about strategies, funding staffing, etc. In addition, the decision making body is composed of a mixture of professionals and community residents, working together to make the best choices. This group is expected to communicate the goals and outcomes of the partnership to local community, city, county and state leaders, encouraging expansion and support of the approach.
 

For more information on CPPC throughout the state of Iowa, click HERE to visit the statewide website. 

CPPC in Polk County

Polk County has been a CPPC site since 2003. The Shared Decision-Making group selected a target geographic area for the CPPC project. The target area is identified by the four zip codes of 50314, 50315, 50316 and 50317 in an effort to reduce disproportionality in the child welfare system. A steering committee was formed to guide the work of the Polk County CPPC site. A Coordinator is assigned to arrange community Family Team Meetings, plan community events and activities, implement a plan for practice and policy change and to recruit and facilitate the shared decision making team.

Join Our Next Meeting!

For more information contact Polk County CPPC Coordinator, Renee Mallo.

Download our CPPC brochure