Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 4 Apr 2017

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From YouTube: Protecting Children

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Learn about Baltimore County's Child Protective Services's new family-focused approach.

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Welcome to hello, baltimore county,, I'm your host, ellen kobler., we're pleased to have with us today kathleen king, who is the baltimore county, child protective services program, manager.

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Thank you so much for joining us., you're welcome.. It's obviously an important job that you and your team do.

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tell us a little bit about how child protective services works.

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So,, child protective services, our job is to protect children for the county.

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We accept referrals of allegations of child maltreatment,.

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And then the social workers in my program are the ones that are reaching out to families and going out to homes,.

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And helping figure out if there is a problem,.

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And how they can help the whole family resolve it.

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Okay,, so I'm hearing sort of a family-based approach..

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I know that there's a program called alternative response..

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What is that, and how long has the county been using? It?.

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So,, the county has been using alternative response, since 2013.

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So basically we have a cps response, and if you think of that, as an umbrella,.

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We used to only just have an investigative response,, but now we have a second track called alternative. Response.

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And the concept of alternative response is, it allows us to go out.

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And do assessments with families without having to worry about finding.

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Or naming somebody as an alleged maltreater,.

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Or making an actual disposition.

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Okay,, so it's less of an enforcement and more of an improving the situation?.

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Yeah., so if there's a situation--.

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We're less focused on what the specific incident is,.

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What specifically happened, as to what kind of led up to it.

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So if you think about it,, everybody has stresses that go on in their family,.

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They have a myriad of different things that sometimes.

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Will lead up to a boiling point where somebody will act out,.

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Or do something, and usually abuse or neglect.

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Is not about a specific incident, but it's the context.

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Is what is much more important that led up to that,.

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And trying to help the family identify what stressors were going on.

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That led them to the point that perhaps somebody hit a child,.

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Or something else happened that normally--.

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Everybody loves their kids and they don't want to hurt their children,.

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But I think we all deal with stresses every day.

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Also, perhaps other issues that are in the parents' life --.

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Substance abuse, other things in the background.

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Or even just employment issues and there's all kinds of things.

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That lead up to that moment, and in alternative response.

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The focus is on being able to kind of talk with the family as a group,.

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And join with them, and say, "hey,, what's going on?.

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Let's sit down and look at what led up to this event," as opposed to just focusing on the event.

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Okay, and so who benefits from this alternative response?.

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So,, the entire county benefits from it,.

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And especially the family and the kids, because we get to kind of figure, out--.

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Remember what the strengths are, look at them, kind of look at the bigger picture and say, "okay,. This went awry here,.

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And we just need to tweak this, and adjust this, and get kind of back on track." okay,. So if someone sees a child or has a neighbor,.

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Family member, where they suspect abuse,.

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What should the adult do to try to help the child?.

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So anytime anybody suspects, abuse or neglect,.

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They should call baltimore county department of social services.

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There's a phone number that I think is going to be listed.

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All right, and then they basically report to you that they are concerned.

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Yeah. they'll talk to somebody in our screening department.

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And they will ask them. Some questions. they'll want to know the location of where it happened,.

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Who it involved, they'll want some basic demographic, information, and they'll help you decide or help determine whether or not.

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It's something that rises to the level that needs a cps intervention.

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Because our goal is not to be overly invasive,.

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But to be able to respond when there's truly something.

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That meets the criteria for child maltreatment.

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okay,, so child protective services will send somebody out.

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Into the community and to the home to work directly with the family?.

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Yes. yeah, okay., and so do you find that alternative response.

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Seems to have better outcomes than strictly the enforcement model?.

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I think that for baltimore county,.

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I think we've done even in our investigative response,.

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We have a very similar style as to the alternative, response,.

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But I do think that it's been very effective at being able to get right in there,.

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Work with the family, and kind of bypass the 'this, happened' or 'that happened.'.

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All right. well, thank you so much for spending time with us, today.

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you're welcome. thank you. thanks for having me. sure, and thanks for watching hello, baltimore county..

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We encourage you to connect with baltimore county government on facebook and twitter, and we'll see you next time.