I had the privilege to attend the 90th Annual Meeting of the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) from Jan. 24-28 in Washington, D.C. The CWLA is the oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization in the United States and a prominent leader in advocacy, policy, research and service for this population.

Also attending this conference were approximately 800 private and public agencies and their administrators and various providers, advocates, researchers and students, among others. The five-day event allowed for non-stop opportunities for me to network with others from across the country and to learn about programs in other states. This was my second trip to this conference, so I was familiar with the schedule and knew to wear my comfortable shoes and to take lots of business cards with me for sharing.

As most of my colleagues know, I love talking about our experiences with the Texas Foster Care program, and I am always full of questions for representatives from other states to gauge where we are and what we can learn to improve our program.

This year, the conference consisted of four “mini summits,” each with a series of five workshop sessions on a focused area of practice, including Leadership, Residential Treatment, Juvenile Justice Systems Integration and Early Childhood Mental Health.

The Residential summit was of particular interest in that we have approximately 1,500 members in residential treatment in Texas and transitions between residential and community care can be very challenging.  We also have concerns about identifying behavioral or mental health disorders in young children to refer them to appropriate treatment.  Likewise, many of our children have involvement with Juvenile Justice, and the network of services is the same for both populations. Each of these areas a critical for program designs for foster care.

I began the week by attending a “Professional Institute” on Sunday. This Institute was an introduction to the Building Bridges Initiative sponsored by SAMHSA that was started several years ago through a grant to “strengthen partnerships between community and residentially based service providers, policymakers, advocates, families and youth.” The initiative “seeks to improve integration, collaboration and innovation and promote best practices that will lead to positive outcomes for children and families.” The work done through this initiative has a great deal of applicability to our Texas program as we have participated in a Texas Public Private Partnership group focused on the top-20 youth in the Texas system that have had difficulty maintaining stability in residential treatment and the community.

Probably the most impactful presenter was a young man who was sent from his home in a large Midwest city to a residential program in Arkansas for most of his teen years. He has since graduated from college, earned his master’s degree and is now an administrator of a mental health program. This young man made a moving presentation on how it feels as a youth to be in a residential program far from family and supports with rules and programs that seem to not have an individual correlation to what the youth needs to improve to return home or to become independent. I look forward to sharing these presentations with my colleagues at the Public Private Partnership in Texas and within the STAR Health program.

I came away from the conference reaffirmed that we all share the responsibility of promoting positive outcomes in an integrated, comprehensive child- and family-focused manner.  Foster Care happens within a system that has many stakeholders.  Behavioral Health is a key stakeholder, but in order for us to be successful in promoting resiliency and recovery we must integrate our services with the rest of the system.  This requires relationships with all of the other stakeholders and understanding of their role within the member’s life.

For anyone who would like more in-depth information on the conference, please contact me at mmcmann@centene.com or at 512-406-7253.

Marsha McMann
Director, Foster Care

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