SOP Skills Lab: Safety Mapping

Completion of SOP Foundational and/or Core for Social Workers is required prior to attending this training.

Safety Organized Practice (SOP) skills labs are hands-on workshops to practice applying key elements of SOP to real-life child welfare referrals and cases in your county.

This SOP skills lab will provide focused skill-building in safety mapping for referrals or cases. Safety mapping is the practice of critically thinking through and sorting information into harm/danger, complicating factors, safety and supporting strengths; identifying gray areas; and brainstorming next steps. Safety mapping may be done at an agency level to clarify thinking about a case, or with a family and their network in the context of a child and family team meeting.

This class will provide a brief refresher on the purpose, format and process of safety mapping, followed by group practice in mapping real referrals or cases from your county. Come prepared to participate with your own referrals or cases in mind.

After attending this training, participants will be able to:

• Understand mapping formats for internal agency mappings and mappings in child and family team meetings with families and their networks.
• Understand the mapping process as the way to gather information to inform Harm and Danger Statements and Safety Goals with families and their networks.
• Using a case scenario, sort information into appropriate categories using a standardized mapping format.
• Value the importance of mapping with families and their networks to gather and sort all available information in order to make the highest-quality decisions for children and families.