The SOP Toolkit: Hearing and Helping Our Kids
Stories from the field and resources to help you get the most out of the SOP Toolkit
Integrating a child’s perspective is so important to the work of child welfare. Safety Organized Practice (SOP) provides a series of strategies, specifically the utilization of the Three Houses and Safety House information gathering tools, which allow children, in a developmentally appropriate way, to meaningfully contribute to both risk assessment and safety planning.
Looking for some quick tips and strategies to break down these important tools? Look no further than the SOP Toolkit, which provides quick guides dedicated to your role in child welfare services.
What does the Toolkit have for leaders?
What does the Toolkit have for line staff?
More Quick Guides, Please
No problem! You can browse our full quick guide catalogue at the SOP Toolkit website.
Stories from the Field...
Tulare County’s SOP Journey
One of the most unique aspects about SOP in California is how individual counties came to champion the practice. In Tulare County, their journey began in 2018. Four years later, CWS Policy and Program Specialists Jeanette Shaw and Allison Hendrix have written in to share their excitement about how far they have come and how much farther they still plan to go.
“With staff trained and momentum built, we are now exploring how to fully integrate SOP into all our practices.”
When it came to integrating SOP elements (such as engaging and integrating the voices of families, youth and safety networks in planning for safety) into their current practice, Hendrix and Permanency Placement and Assessment Unit Supervisor Ruby Reinertsen quickly identified Child and Family Team Meetings (CFTM) as a natural place to start.
“Out of this vision,” they wrote, “the need for a way to use SOP tools such as the Safety House and Circles of Safety, [and to create] Harm and Danger Statements and Safety Goals as a team became apparent.”
To make this vision a reality, large posters and facilitator guides of the tools have been created and are being laminated so that the team can actively complete the tools, create statements, and develop goals collaboratively. Pictures can then be taken and uploaded to CWS/CMS to preserve the work, create continuity for the family, and document the family’s progress.
“It is our goal that this will lead to deeper engagement with families and youth from the start and across the case continuum. We hope to add these to the wealth of information already available on the SOP Toolkit.”
We look forward to sharing these tools in the future!
Share Your Own SOP Success Stories, Tips and/or Tools!
The power of SOP has always been that it is grassroots – developed and enhanced by the people who use it in practice! Have you developed a new SOP tool for your own county? Or do you have a success story to highlight? If you have a specific tool or a story from the field you’d like to share, you can do so through our submission form. Simply fill in the fields, attach the tool, and we’ll be in touch from there!
Learn More About the SOP Toolkit
Be sure to visit the Safety Organized Practice (SOP) Toolkit website.
Check out the SOP Toolkit blog!
Read about more Tools from the Kit and Stories from the Field on the SOP Toolkit blog.