Analysis of Innovation Culture
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Analysis of Innovative Culture
GCU - LDR 640
Alexcia King
March 10, 2021
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The culture of Child Welfare in the state of Michigan is the driving force behind
everything that we do. The goal of child welfare is to keep children safe, establish permanency
and to strengthen families (Katz, 2016). That is the culture of child welfare. Child welfare is
historical known for removing children from their homes. This dates to the beginning of child
welfare where Indian American and Alaskan Indian children were removed from their homes
and communities even when familial placement was available (Simmons, 2014). These children
lost access to their heritage and the essence of who they are. The child welfare system had to
become innovative in the way they chose to protect children. For Native children, the Indian
Child Welfare Act was created to keep Indian children with Indian families and allow for tribes
to make decisions on what happened (Simmons, 2014). It is possible to keep children safe while
maintaining the family structure.
Child welfare had to redesign the way they protected children. Protection does not equal
removal. Case workers had to become more creative in the safety plans. Policy had to be updated
to be more specific. One of the ways policy had to change was by making relative placement a
thing (Katz, 2016). Children who had to be removed from their homes are now able to be placed
with an appropriate relative. In fact, case workers must find multiple family members to place
the child with before searching for a foster care home (Katz, 2016). Another innovation is
allowing the relative placement to become licensed as foster care parents so they can receive
benefits to help with caring for the child (2016).
One strategy I would propose is to move to fictive kin relationships being an option for
placement. The child welfare and foster care system is overwhelmed with minority children who
have family that may not be biologically related to them. Growing up, I would have aunts who
were not actually my mom’s sisters that I considered to be family. If anything happened to my
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mom, they would be the first I would call before family. That is an example of a fictive kin
relationship. African American children may not know their biological distant relatives and a
fake aunt or uncle may be more familial to them. Though this is not a traditional family structure,
it is family, nonetheless. If given the opportunity to present this to other employees, I would go
beyond research and slideshows but instead bring families in and demonstrate the bond children
may have with their fictive kin. Building capacity for innovative thinking is centered around
allowing everyone to have an input. The more diverse the staff is, the better we can serve diverse
communities. Each employee’s background in child welfare usually plays a role as to why they
would choose such a difficult job. Focusing on the children and what is best for them will allow
for us to get out of what we deem best for us and creatively come up with ways to establish
permanency.
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References
Katz, J. (Oct, 2016). Changing the Culture in Child Welfare. The Imprint.
https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/changing-culture-child-welfare/21966
Simmons, D. (Oct, 2014). Improving the Wellbeing of American Indian and Alaska Native
Children and Families through State-Level Efforts to Improve Indian Child Welfare Act
Compliance. National Indian Child Welfare Association. https://www.nicwa.org/wp
content/uploads/2016/11/Improving-the-Well-being-of-American-Indian-and-Alaska
Native-Children-and-Families.pdf