Even as we type, my colleague and good friend David is in Portland Oregon, teaching a couple of courses on facilitating family decision making group-based service teams. What a mouthful THAT phrase was! These courses are based on work he and I have done here at CFRP over the past dozen or so years.

He took along one of my favorite little ditties: a matrix I created that offers comparisons between four program models.

Now that there are a number of models to use — and many variations within the models — the question people ask me now is: which one is best? Well, I’m not in the model-pimping business, not even for my own. But here’s what I WILL do: let’s think together about how to think about choosing a model… Read more…

Betcha thought we’d abandoned this blog, died, been taken hostage or some other equally improbable tragedy. Truth is we had the temerity to change web hosts and got our comeuppance accordingly. Could not get this blog moved over to save our life! Then when we DID get it moved, it was missing several months worth of material and had some hitches in its git-along that prevented me from logging into it.

Bit by bit, we appear to be recovering.

Don’t know what to do about those lost posts. Figure someday someone will find their electronic remains and it’ll be like some futuristic finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The hitches in the git-along (or the ones I’ve noticed so far) were fixed by WordPress maven and my new idol Andrea.

Let’s try to get this rolling again!

Being neutral doesn’t mean you are passive. Good facilitators know when to pull the group’s attention toward them and when to step back and get out of the way. You should take a seat or otherwise get out of the way when a group is talking well about its content (aka topics of discussion). “Talking well” means reasonably balanced participation from all members in a conversation that appears to be generating ideas and understanding. When the group is NOT talking so well, then it’s time to stand up and fulfill one of the Functions of a Facilitator: Teaching New Thinking Skills.

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A word today about facilitator neutrality: what it is, what it isn’t and why it’s essential to program success. Many programs assume that a counselor or social worker is (or should be) prepared to facilitate team meetings. We beg to differ. Our facilitation model is based on the work first developed by David Straus. Its emphasis is on facilitator neutrality and effective process design. One of the weaknesses (in my opinion) of many family conference and wraparound programs is their inclination to combine the role of the “Coordinator” with that of the “Facilitator”.

For example, check out this sample from the book “Theoretical Perspectives for Direct Social Work Practice: A Generalist-eclectic Approach” by Peter Lehmann and Nick Coady. They discuss the facilitation role (neutral convening of team meetings) in combination with the coordination role (working directly with children and families to assemble their teams and implement their plans).

What’s the problem with this? A few things.

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Decision-making is a fascinating field. Do you know the difference between a "tough" decision and a "bad" one? Not every bad outcome is the result of a bad decision, just like not every GOOD outcome is the result of a good decision. Decision theorists describe tough decisions as ones that are:

1. Complex
2. Ambiguous, and/or
3. Conflictual

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Yesterday I was treated to a conversation with Dr. Eugene Bardach. Some years back, he wrote about the Coordinated Youth Services Council in a book about collaboration. He came back, a dozen or so years later, to find out what happened to that collaborative in the long run. What ensued was a fascinating conversation about the collaboratives he's studied, how they've fared in the long run and what difference any of it makes.

This conversation left me with a number of thoughts and questions to ponder. Thoughts about the natural lifespan of collaboratives and questions about measures of success and failure, all of which I shall perpetrate upon you now.

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Here is an excellent editorial on this subject, sent by my friend Lynn at First Five of Marin. In a nutshell, this piece brings our attention to the mental health needs of foster children and the ways our systems have failed to meet them.  Specifically, it says, psychiatric assessments and care are not provided soon enough, if at all. There is an over-reliance on medication alone to solve mental health problems. There is work to be done to improve access to services and collaboration among the systems that serve foster children.

So true.

The piece also cites advances in care for foster children. Prop 63 was passed and will enable California to improve its mental health system. California has participated in a nationwide movement to reform and redesign child welfare systems

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I was struck (figuratively, not literally) by Jon Carroll's column in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. He was talking about grievances and grudges and any number of other things that separate us one from another. And how death trumps them all. People up and die and, after that, there is no possibility for any sort of reconciliation. Or of ever even speaking again.

This is germane to our concerns in a number of important ways.  I'm thinking now of some of the people I've met in my work here who are at total impasse with one another and have either severed all ties or are suing each other. And although we are not in the practice of forcing people to hold hands and sing Kum-ba-yah, we have found that it works in everyone's interests to aim for reconciliation.

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Today while walking across the parking lot I encountered one of our conference facilitators who asked me to say a word about “what happens when moral issues come up in conferences”. I peppered her with questions: how do these conversations differ from any other conversations in which there are intense feelings, difficult decisions and controversy involved? Who frames the issue as “moral” rather than “economic” or “medical” or “practical” or “political” etc.? What is the team’s role in engaging a moral dilemma?

Let me give you an example, a composite description of situations we encounter here: A hypothetical family conference. The team consists of a mother, her boyfriend, her best friend, her mother, her social worker and her family nurse practitioner. She has a case open with Child Protective Services on account of her oldest child (she has three), a 7 year old boy with health complications that are not being properly treated. Mom, herself, has some health complications: she is in her mid-40s and has an auto-immune disorder. While working through the issues that are endangering her 7-year old’s health, a new issue comes up: mom is pregnant. Her boyfriend is overjoyed; this will be his first biological child. Her nurse practitioner is horrified. Carrying this child to term could endanger this mother’s life. The issue is raised in the room and the considerations on the table are: have the baby or have an abortion. The best friend is a fundamentalist Christian and staunchly anti-abortion. She is adamant that her friend have this baby and feels that it is her responsibility to God to prevent her friend from aborting the pregnancy. The nurse practitioner feels strongly that to have this baby would be unconscionable. What about the mother’s inability to care for the children she already has? What if she dies as a result of this pregnancy? The social worker shares the concerns of the nurse, but she, too, is very religious and strongly believes that abortion is murder. In her role as a social worker, she is expected to be neutral and not share her religious views. She thinks this pregnancy is disastrous and directly impacts on the safety of the other children at home. Yet how could she live with herself if she wound up being party to someone aborting their fetus?

And the mother? She is, understandably, all over the map.

What makes this conversation so incredibly loaded? Read more…

Over the past few years, we've taken an interest in "contested hearings" in child dependency court. That's where the children's welfare system wants to remove a child from their home and one or more of their parents/guardians is "contesting" the order. It goes to court and the judge decides. In our county, we've been worried about how traumatic this is for families and children, how contentious it is for child welfare and legal professionals involved and how costly it is for the system. We created a project to study this and try to change it. <cue scary music and maniacal laughter> Read more…