Child Welfare Blog Posts

Presented each spring by the Northern Academy at UC Davis Human Services, the Sarah Duncan Champion for Children and Families Award honors one of Northern California’s outstanding social workers and seeks to highlight additional child welfare line social workers who reflect Duncan’s passion, skill and tireless commitment to working to improve outcomes for children and families. This is the second year the award has been presented. 

For those who submitted a nomination, thank you so much for taking the time to recognize one of your valued colleagues. If you didn’t get a chance to nominate this year: Don’t worry! We are already taking submissions for next year’s award.

The Resource Center for Family-Focused Practice at UC Davis Human Services is please to share a new resource for parent partners.

Child welfare work often feels like a thankless job. We can get so caught up in the day-to-day deluge of work that we don’t always pause to recognize good work when it is happening. There’s just so much work, and so many challenges, that taking the time to reflect on how much good is actually done, every single day, can seem impossible.

Looking for some quick tips and strategies to break down these important tools?

Safety Organized Practice has become so embedded in child welfare best practice that its acronym (SOP) can be tossed around loosely in the field. Many new social workers may not yet fully understand what SOP is, and many more may lack an understanding of its full history. Even seasoned SOP Champions may need a refresher from time to time.

Over the past two years, human services professionals have gone from experiencing pandemic stress, to pandemic fatigue, to finding a “new normal” as they regain their footing in daily work life. On May 24, 2022, the Northern Academy at UC Davis Human Services hosted a free, full-day virtual event devoted to discussing the challenges of work and life stresses and how to find workable solutions to mitigate this stress.

The field of Human Services is as wide and complex as its moniker might suggest. For larger agencies, an overlap in services is almost inevitable, but this doesn’t mean it should be shrugged off. For services that deal with vulnerable and/or traumatized children and families—such as CalWORKS and Child Welfare Services—each contact with children and families has the potential to cause additional trauma. The need to prevent inefficient, repetitive, and/or otherwise overlapping communications becomes paramount.

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in National Social Worker Month this March! While the month may be over, we’ll never stop looking for new ways to express our gratitude for those who have made it their life’s work to support vulnerable children and families. To that end, we are thrilled to kick off April by announcing the winner of the inaugural Sarah Duncan Champion for Children and Families Award!