Every day at the Division of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, we get the chance to connect with someone who needs our help. To a struggling family or a child in crisis, today might be the most important day in their life.
Every phone call we take might be the one that makes the difference for that person on the other end. Every meeting we go to might be the one that brings the right people together. Every person we talk with might need us more than we know.
For the people we serve, it's not an exaggeration to say every day counts.
Our goals at DCFS are clear and simple. We want to keep kids safe. We want families to be stronger together. We want every child in Arkansas to have a safe, stable, nurturing family every day.
Safety and permanency--it's what we're all about.
This work is hard. Our front-line staff members see and hear things every day that shake them to their core. But they keep doing the work because they know how important it is. They know how important it is to give their absolute best every day, even when they're mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.
And they're glad to do it because they understand that the families and children deserve nothing less.
But even as dedicated and committed as our staff is, we can always do more. We can always find smarter, more efficient ways to reach our goals with families.
To help push ourselves, we've recently started a campaign called Every Day Counts. We've set some tough goals focused on improving our work around safety and permanency issues like returning children to their homes and adoption.
For example, we want to increase the number of children who are placed with relatives as their first placement while in foster care, and we want to return children to their homes as quickly as it's safe to do so. We know how much more connected and supported children feel when they are with people they know and trust to keep them safe.
And for children who need adoptive families, we want to recruit more adoptive families, and we want to reduce the obstacles that keep us from placing children with their forever families as quickly as possible. We know that no child should linger in foster care with no sense of home or belonging.
We don't expect our staff to be perfect, but we are asking them to commit to working with focused effort and a sense of urgency every day. We're asking them to take advantage of every opportunity, every resource, every community partnership to help move our families and children toward the goals they and we have set.
If we can do that, together, then the outcomes will take care of themselves. Today, tomorrow, and moving forward. Our families deserve that kind of effort from us. And the work our staff and our partners do every day will make a difference.
Because every day counts.
Mischa Martin is the director of the Division of Children and Family Services at the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
"day" - Google News
July 12, 2021 at 05:35PM
https://ift.tt/3e9rfVS
OPINION | MISCHA MARTIN: Every day counts - Arkansas Online
"day" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3f7h3fo
https://ift.tt/2VYSiKW
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "OPINION | MISCHA MARTIN: Every day counts - Arkansas Online"
Post a Comment