Managing Child-Welfare Incidents

An agent who works at a Child Protection Services agency receives a call from a nurse at a hospital who suspects that the parents of one of her patients is physically abusing the child patient. The agent creates an incident report using the information that the nurse provides. She notes in the report that the nurse is a mandatory reporter because the nurse must report her suspicions for legal reasons. This incident report includes information about the nurse, her allegations, the child, the child’s parents, and other relevant information.

The agent immediately performs a safety assessment of the incident to help her determine the safety of the child. After performing this assessment, the agent knows that the situation is urgent. Meanwhile, the agent’s manager reviews the incident report and decides that sufficient information exists to further investigate the incident, so he approves the incident. Consequently, the screening decision for the incident report changes to a status of Screened In. Subsequently, the agent escalates the incident to a case for investigation and assigns a social worker to the case. The social worker visits the family’s home, talks with the parents and child, evaluates the home environment, and uses the gathered information to perform a family assessment of the case to help him determine the family’s ability to care for the child.

After performing the family assessment, the social worker decides to temporarily place the child in the custody of her grandparents. The social worker also creates a service plan for the case contacts. This plan includes scheduled visits to a therapist for the child and the parents. To prepare for the case’s court hearing that is scheduled in a few months, the social worker keeps track of court documents, court correspondence, and court activities that relate to the case. After the court hearing, the social worker records information about court decisions for the case.