What follows are snippets of the goals from the DFPS website, with some minor edits.
Goal: Client-Centered Services
Maximize the safety and well-being of clients, families and communities served through client-centered and evidence-based programs and best practices.
- Promote safe and healthy families and protect children and vulnerable adults from abuse, neglect and exploitation.
- Improve client services by being proactive, data-driven and constantly evolving.
- Provide proficient assessments of abuse, neglect and exploitation reports through 24/7 Statewide Intake call centers and online reporting.
- Focus on accurate, thorough and timely child protective services investigations and adult protective services in-home investigations.
- Offer and support innovative services that are data-driven, holistic in approach and advance best practices.
- Build diverse placement capacity to help ensure clients can stay in their local communities and reduce the time to achieve permanency.
- Deliver coordinated services, that target and support family and client independence and reduces recidivation.
- Cultivate collaborative partnerships with families and clients that help better suit services to improve safe outcomes.
- Optimize caseworker specialization to meet increasingly complex APS client needs specifically related to exploitation.
- Support and implement the community-based care model by partnering with the Office of Community-Based Care Transition to help increase placement capacity closer to local communities and assist with improving client outcomes.
Goal: Workforce Stability and Development
Increase stability and rebuild institutional knowledge by understanding the workforce climate and the agency’s needs.
- Build the agency’s mission, vision and values into agency culture so that it guides employee actions and directs policy decisions.
- Examine the drivers of turnover and invest in opportunities that increase workplace benefits, such as competitive compensation, pay parity for positions, career ladders and telework opportunities.
- Establish a strategy to identify and develop potential leaders to support succession planning efforts and expand professional development opportunities for current leadership.
- Remain committed to broadening staff development programs through collaboration with agency divisions with a focus on innovative and comprehensive training to deepen knowledge and cultivate agency cohesion.
- Invest in initiatives that provide support to workers regarding safety, mental and physical well-being, the effects of secondary trauma and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the work space.
- Acknowledge and recognize staff for exceptional service and commitment and continue to provide opportunities for growth in the agency.
Goal: Agency Operations
Strengthen internal processes by analyzing agency operations and identifying areas for more efficient and effective operations.
- Identify inefficient internal processes, policies and information technology and implement a holistic approach to corrective and purposeful improvement.
- Advance the growth of innovative service delivery options by exploring provider contracting and procurement with simplified and consistent processes.
- Administer an agencywide and data-driven approach when making changes to information technology systems, deploying new processes and implementing new data collection tools.
- Encourage innovation by focusing on agency opportunities and building diverse groups to solve and anticipate future challenges. Create an agency culture and environment that supports open and ongoing dialog.
- Strengthen the Continuity of Operations Plan to include lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and improve agency response time during emergency disruptions to continue essential business operations.
- Ensure representation of all key stakeholders when implementing new programs and processes to build staff buy‐in, make considerations for all perspectives and address the impact to business operations.
- Develop a culture of collaboration between divisions by increasing internal communication and teamwork aimed toward strengthening relationships and producing greater agency outcomes through mutual effort.
- Strengthen and increase frequency of communication from executive staff to front-line and support staff by developing a communication plan that fosters better contextual understanding of the legal, financial and operational decisions of the agency.
Goal: Community Relations
Engage the public to assist with supporting and protecting clients, families and communities through improved external communications, outreach and collaborations.
- Engage clients, families and communities served by creating a path for their voices to be heard so the agency may better meet their needs.
- Encourage community engagement through social media and other platforms by providing a positive, data-driven narrative of the agency’s strengths and community needs.
- Build cross-divisional relationships between programs and the Faith-Based and Community Engagement division to ensure all programs maximize community resources.
- Strengthen relationships with child advocacy centers, law enforcement agencies and other community partners through participation in local multidisciplinary teams.
- Expand technical assistance and support to communities to help them plan, assess and choose appropriate evidence‐based programs to support children, youth, adults and families in their community.
- Use agency resources to build new relationships, and strengthen existing ones, with external partners by participating in key public events.
- Further opportunities to maximize partner collaboration and to share timely information with external stakeholders and communities about important issues facing the agency.
- Increase positive outcomes for families by improving partnerships within communities, incorporating lived-experience practices, community-based prevention programs and advisory committees.
