Too often great ideas are kept in-house without recognizing their potential to create change beyond the communities where they are born. COA’s Innovative Practices Award (IPA) identifies, documents, and celebrates examples of successful approaches to management and service delivery practices adopted by our accredited organizations.

In 2020, a committee made up of COA volunteers and staff selected 4 finalists to move forward with a full case study. Alternative Family Services (AFS) came out the winner. Read on to find out how the AFS Enhanced Visitation Model kept families in touch during the crisis of COVID-19.

Helping families stabilize, heal, and reunify is an essential part of the work at Alternative Family Services. In-person visitation between kids in foster care and their biological family members is an integral part of the therapeutic process. The frequency of visits between parents and their kids are one of the strongest predictors of the family reuniting. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the challenges kids and families must overcome on their journey towards reunification.

As the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic became more apparent, AFS staff and clients were suddenly faced with the reality that in-person visitation between kids and their family may be halted, or at the very least severely restricted. The ever-changing state and county guidelines added uncertainty and stress to the situation. Since many of our AFS staff, biological families, and foster families are considered a “higher-risk” demographic to have serious consequences from COVID-19, there was palpable fear in conducting in-person visits. AFS staff knew it was critical for families to continue to stay connected, especially during such uncertain times. So, a taskforce was formed that included representation from key AFS stakeholders. The group was asked to create a safe and equitable plan that would allow in-person visitation to resume. After much input and deliberation, the Enhanced Visitation Model was approved.

Exploring the AFS Enhanced Visitation Model

Health Risk Assessment

It was important for AFS staff to evaluate and address client’s COVID-19 concerns and mitigate the risk of individual exposure to the virus. The taskforce sought input from its constituents, researched professional resources, and ultimately developed the “Wellness Questionnaire.” Staff can rapidly administer this assessment tool to determine COVID-19 risk factors each visitor had been exposed to within the 14 days prior to an in-person visit.

Visitation Service Plan

A “Visitation Service Plan” is a simple, flexible, and predominately check-box/circle-based tool that seamlessly incorporates the risk factors identified in the “Wellness Questionnaire,” assigning families to one of three visitation service levels according to COVID risk level:

• Community-based (Low Risk): local government, community mandated precautions only (masks, handwashing, appropriate hygiene precautions)
• Social Distance Enhanced (Moderate Risk): physical distanced “Enhanced Visitation Venues” required
• Virtual Visitation (High Risk): virtual visitation only

AFS staff wanted to provide therapeutic strategies in a fun, genuine, and safe environment regardless of their Visitation Service Plan. Once the assessment and planning tools were established, staff needed to create pandemic-safe stations for families to interact.

Enhanced Visitation Venues

When families have a positive, stress-free visit, they are more likely to retain and practice the therapeutic skills they learn.  So, AFS staff developed a variety of indoor and outdoor “Visitation Venues” that are fun, affordable, replicable, and portable. The visitation venues meet COVID-19 safety protocols so parents and their children can safely interact. Here are some examples of our indoor and outdoor venues:

Indoor Visitation Venues

• The Hugging Station provides families with the opportunity to physically embrace, parents and children put on arm-length disposable gloves before reaching through sleeves attached to a transparent plastic curtain so they can safely hug during the pandemic. The Hugging Station can be easily decontaminated after each use. 
• Activity Tables feature a Plexiglas divider, which sits on a table with parents on one side and child(ren) on the other. Participants can paint outlines of each other, play Tic-Tac-Toe or jointly create drawings with dry-erase markers, among other options.
• The Interactive Puppet Theater is where kids and parents make easy-to-construct sock puppets to safely “perform” in the puppet theater. It was designed with a table, clamps and Plexiglas with precut holes modified with rubber shields. AFS organized one-hour sock puppet workshops for staff so they can teach clients how to construct their own puppets for this playful encounter.
• Gaming Stations featuring video game consoles and large television screens allow families to play video games together while sitting at least six feet apart from one another, to ensure proper social distancing.

Curious to see what these options look like? Check out  this video that highlights our indoor visitation venues.

Outdoor Visitation Venues

Since research has shown COVID-19 is less likely to spread between individuals while outdoors, AFS staff has developed a variety of safe outdoor venues that can easily be setup and disinfected after each use. When visits occur in the parking lots of one of our offices, artificial turf and gymnastic mats provide ground cover for families to play outdoor games. Pop-up tents provide shade when necessary, and bikes and tricycles are provided for families to ride together (staff uses a Clorox Total 360^® Disinfectant Cleaner between uses).

AFS Visitation in 2021

The AFS Enhanced Visitation Model, funded with the assistance of the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, was the winner of COA’s 2020 Innovative Practices Award. While we were humbled to be selected, we are always striving to be innovative when it comes to providing the highest level of care to our children and families. At the end of every Enhanced Visitation Session, staff collects feedback from families to see what they like and what they feel has room for improvement.

While we are thankful that the COVID-19 vaccine is being distributed, AFS will continue to adhere to our Enhanced Visitation Model for the foreseeable future to ensure that staff, families and resource parents remain safe.

The views, information and opinions expressed herein are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Accreditation (COA). COA invites guest authors to contribute to the COA blog due to COA’s confidence in their knowledge on the subject matter and their expertise in their chosen field.

Alternative Family Services

Founded in 1978, Alternative Family Services (AFS) provides thoughtful, informed care, adoption and mental health services to foster children and youth throughout Northern California. The mission of Alternative Family Services is to support vulnerable children and families in need of stability, safety and wellbeing in their communities.

AFS, a COA-certified foster family agency, currently serves the diverse and varied needs of 1,500 foster youth, plus their biological and foster families, in the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Sacramento Regions. Services provided by AFS include therapeutic foster care, Intensive Services Foster Care, support for foster children with developmental disabilities, therapeutic visitation, community-based mental health services, transitional housing support, independent life skills training, and much more.

The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and the Council on Accreditation have released the following statement on efforts of the Biden administration to reunify families separated at the border:

The Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border had a profound impact on the well-being of children and families and will have long-term effects on their health, both physical and behavioral, over their lifetimes. The Biden administration’s move to create a task force to reunify children and their parents is an important and welcome first step in the right direction. With the parents of an estimated 628 migrant children still missing, there is no time to waste in finding these parents and reuniting them with their children, some as young as infants.

In his congressional testimony, Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University noted, ‘Sudden, forcible separation of children from their parents is deeply traumatic for both the child and the parent. This triggers a massive biological stress response inside the child, which remains activated until the parent returns and provides comfort.’

This action is only a first step. The Alliance and COA has spoken out actively about family separation policies in recent years, and will continue to do so by calling for immediate action to appropriately locate every child and do all in their power to reunify families safely, providing them with the supports they need for healing.

The 2021 CYD Standards are now live at coanet.org/cyd-standards/.
 
Standards assignments will begin February 2nd. Please reach out to your Accreditation Coordinator with any questions.

Background

The new CYD standards come on the heels of valuable feedback from stakeholders like you. All of our edits were done with a single goal in mind: to increase the value of accreditation by focusing on those practices and activities that will have the greatest impact on the children and youth COA-accredited programs work with. 
 
The 2021 revision focuses on the standards that promote the development of effective, programs and their capacity to provide quality experiences that help children and youth thrive. In service of that, we have refocused the standards to 1) give you more time to devote to those practices that have a more direct impact on children and youth, and 2) allow you to spend less time compiling evidence and more time improving practice. This means a:

• 48% Reduction in the amount of Administration and Management Self-Study evidence
• 23% Reduction in the amount of Service section Self-Study evidence
• 12% Reduction in the number of Service standards 
• 11% Reduction in the number of Administration and Management standards

A PDF summary of the standards changes can be found here.
 
Thank you for your continued dedication to best practice, and for being a part of the COA community.

Questions? Please contact Tobi Harrington Murch at tmurch -(at)- coanet.org. 

From President Biden’s clear call for unity to poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s impassioned reading of her poem “The Hill We Climb,” this morning’s inauguration ceremony delivered the unifying message our country desperately needs to move forward to create a just and equitable society where all people and communities flourish. 

Today, on his first day in office, President Biden signed 17 executive orders on issues ranging from the COVID-19 crisis and the economy, to climate change and racial justice. We were pleased to see an executive order on advancing racial equity and supporting underserved communities. This order creates a whole-of-government initiative to advance racial equity, directing federal agencies to undertake a baseline review of the state of equity within their agencies, launches an equitable data working group, and directs agencies to engage with communities who have been historically underrepresented, underserved, and discriminated against in federal policies. Importantly, this executive order revokes the previous administration’s order that limited the ability of federal government agencies, contractors, and grantees from implementing critical diversity and inclusion training. The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities co-led a letter, signed by 41 other organizations, opposing the original Trump executive order in October of 2020.

We also applaud actions taken today to prevent workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, the extension of the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures until at least March 31, and the extension of the pause on student loan payments until at least Sept. 30. At a time when our economy is struggling, these actions will provide needed relief and begin to move our country in the right direction. While these are only first steps on so many critical issues, they represent the actions required to power us forward…together.

The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities is merging with the Council on Accreditation to form a new organization that will convene and catalyze a dynamic, inclusive, multifaceted network of human and social services organizations and passionate allies committed to achieving greater impact in communities across our country. 

The inauguration and President Biden’s address this morning has led to feelings of hope and optimism as we work together to create this new collaborative and unified organization. Our job now is to rally and inspire our community of social heroes and essential workers. Our responsibility, as a social sector, must be to continue efforts to work together to address the larger needs in our nation. 

Today, more than ever, we look forward to engaging our network and harnessing the power of the social sector to create a brighter bolder future.   

Sincerely, 

Jody Levison-Johnson
President and CEO
Alliance and COA

In many ways, this last year has created a crossroads for human service organizations. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have placed children and families of color at greater risk, with disproportionate impact on Black communities.  Demands for a reckoning on racial injustice and inequity in this country have called for fundamental and overdue changes to systems, institutions, and practices.

COA is committed to an accreditation process that supports organizations to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our work to focus on racial and other inequities includes identifying where our accreditation standards can be strengthened to reflect the expertise, lived experiences, and strategies at the forefront of anti-racism work, and also highlighting areas of current practice where organizations should look to address discrimination and disparity.

In this post, we highlight some of those key areas that speak to equity, diversity and inclusion, such as community involvement and advocacy; representation in the workforce; training content; data collection and measurement; and culturally responsive service provision.

Community involvement and advocacy

Human service organizations do not exist in a bubble. They are shaped and often constrained by the same systemic biases and inequities that exist in legislation, policies, regulations, and funding streams. Ongoing community involvement, that includes outreach, education, and advocacy, is one way organizations can leverage available resources for the communities they serve and amplify the voices of their stakeholders. Our governance standards reflect the importance of partnership and communication within the community to effect change within organizations, communities, and in the systems of which they are a part. 

By building relationships and deeply engaging communities, organizations can identify unmet needs and build coalitions with the capacity to advocate for legislation and policies that will positively impact children, adults, and families. Organizations connect people to services, support, resources, and neighbors. COA promotes collaboration as a way for organizations to refine and leverage their service array and stay responsive to changing community needs. The standards emphasize the importance of collaboration within the organization and community at large through sustained communication across stakeholder groups.

Representation in the workforce

COA is intentional about communities served being represented throughout an organization, from program staff to executive leadership to the governing body. It is vital that the people served feel connected to and identify with the people and organizations with whom they are involved. A key part of assuring representation in the workforce is managing recruitment efforts that includes a diverse applicant pool. Recognizing that this process is important to an organization’s workforce assessment, the human resources (HR) and service standards speak to specific recruitment criteria, such as cultural identities and relevant lived experience, along with retention support.

Training content

In the human services sector, the workforce often does not adequately reflect the people and communities served, particularly when it comes to race and ethnicity. To address this gap, it is imperative that organizations ensure that personnel have the knowledge, awareness, support, interest, and skills necessary to effectively engage people with whom they may not share the same privileges, identities, cultural practices, or other lived experiences. Our training standards reflect the belief that staff cannot serve people effectively without a comprehensive understanding of the systemic forces, including racial bias and discrimination, that continue to shape the lives of generations of individuals and families.

Ensuring professional learning opportunities for all staff is essential to combating inequity in organizations where people from historically marginalized communities are frequently underrepresented in leadership roles and experience obstacles to advancement. COA’s training standards require organizations to maintain culturally responsive personnel development plans to ensure that staff have the competencies needed not only to fulfill their existing roles, but also to advance in their field and in the organization. The standards emphasize the importance of utilizing a wide array of educational methods and evaluating training effectiveness in a way that considers varying learning styles, needs, and professional development goals.

Data collection and measurement

In order to recognize and better understand patterns of systemic racism in human services and formulate just solutions, organizations need to have the right tools to evaluate where and how disproportionality and disparity exist. COA’s Performance and Quality Improvement (PQI) standards provide the framework for implementation of a sustainable, organization-wide PQI system that increases the organization’s capacity to make data-informed decisions thatsupport achievement of performance targets, program goals, positive outcomes, and level of satisfaction experienced by the staff and people served.

Organizations can identify disproportionality and address disparity in outcomes by tracking indicators according to race/ethnicity and other demographic variables. Data analysis is key to addressing racial disparity at all levels of decision-making, from strategic and annual planning to program evaluation.

Culturally responsive service provision

The damaging effects of institutional racial inequality are particularly evident in the child welfare system, where Black and brown children and families are disproportionally represented, experience service inequities, and have significantly poorer outcomes as a result. The Family Foster Care and Kinship Care (FKC) and Public Child and Family Services (CFS) standards speak directly to the necessity of culturally relevant and responsive service provision, including identifying appropriate services for birth families, assessing and training prospective resource families, and strengthening each child’s support network.

When it has been determined to be unsafe for a child to remain with their family, prioritizing placement with relative caregivers/kin and recruiting diverse foster or resource parents are key practices for ensuring that child’s connection to their communities and their cultural identities remain. Additionally, annual resource family recruitment plans should include targeted outreach activities that reflect the needs and characteristics of children in care. COA’s standards emphasize the importance of providing the support, investment, and resources necessary to address the unique needs of kinship caregivers in service to the children, families, and communities that they and the organizations with whom they partner serve.

COA is committed to ending systemic racism, oppression, and discrimination, and will continue to push forward standards of best practice that are relevant; reflect our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion; and support human services organizations in making positive, meaningful, and lasting impact in their communities.

As we continuously assess where the accreditation standards can be strengthened and further informed by best practices in anti-racism work, we want to hear from you. Please share your experiences and feedback about advocacy, staff development, training, and collecting outcomes by race at the link below. We welcome your input.

January 7, 2021 – Jody Levison-Johnson, president and CEO of the newly merged Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance) and the Council on Accreditation (COA) issued the following statement in response to the violent protests that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol and one tragic death in Washington, D.C. yesterday:

“The violent protests that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol represent a sad and appalling stain on our nation’s history and a travesty of our democratic ideals.

“We stand for a free, just and civil society that represents the voices of all people. That, in fact, is the hallmark of our democracy.

“All people have the right to be heard and in our democracy one way that is exercised is through our right to vote. The people have spoken through their votes, the states have ratified those votes and the courts have upheld those decisions. It is now time for the President and Congress to ensure their commitment to a peaceful transfer of power occurs. This is essential to upholding our democracy and everything we stand for as Americans– equity, a free and non-violent exchange of ideas, and the right and ability for all people and communities to thrive.”

An update from Jody Levison-Johnson, COA President & CEO

January 6, 2021

Hello all…

As we welcome a new year and begin to move forward from the challenges of a year that looked dramatically different than any of us could have imagined, I remain hopeful for what 2021 will hold for us all.  That is why I wanted to start the year off by sharing an update on the merger between the Council on Accreditation (COA) and the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance).

I am happy to share that at the end of 2020, the merger was approved by the boards of both organizations and by a majority of voting members of the Alliance. The vote capped a year-long exploration and four-month due diligence process overseen by both organizations.

While we continue to finalize the details of the merger, I will serve as president and CEO of both COA and the Alliance, and Susan Dreyfus will serve as senior advisor to me. Once finalized, I will serve as the President and CEO of the new organization, which will be headquartered in Washington, D.C.

More information will be coming soon about the offerings and pathways to engagement the new organization will provide for human and social service organizations, foundations, state associations, government entities, and all of those who make up the human and social service field and sector.

I look forward to continuing to engage with each of you in our quest to create a rigorous and responsive force that catalyzes the voices of the social sector and allows us to be both current and forward-looking.  I will be holding a virtual Town Hall meeting later this month, so please be on the lookout for an invitation in the coming days. I look forward to seeing you there.  As always, you can continue to view the most recent status updates on the COA and Alliance websites, including our most recent press release.

Thank you for your continued partnership, and here’s to an exciting year ahead and new beginnings.

***

November 20, 2020

Greetings,

I wanted to reach out and share some news regarding the potential merger between the Council on Accreditation (COA) and the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance). I am excited to share that both the COA and Alliance Boards voted unanimously to move forward with our potential merger.

Now that we have reached unanimous votes from both Boards, we will begin finalizing documentation, proceeding with the vote of the Alliance membership, and planning for integration and implementation – pending membership approval. 

This new organization will be unifying, intrepid, just, and purposeful. It will take our field and sector to new heights and allow us to contribute in deeply meaningful ways to support people, organizations, and communities to thrive. As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns.

Jody Levison-Johnson, PhD, LCSW

COA President & CEO

***

August 25, 2020

We are pleased to share that the Council on Accreditation (COA)’s Board of Directors voted to move forward with plans to explore a merger with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities! The Alliance has always been a close partner, and was one of our founding organizations, together with the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). To learn more, visit the press release here, or watch the message from Jody Levison-Johnson, COA’s President & CEO, below.

Transcript

Hello. I am Jody Levison-Johnson, the President and CEO of the Council on Accreditation.

I wanted to connect and share some news in one of the most personal ways possible right now.

These are unique and challenging times, and in this environment, I think each of us is learning that we need to find new ways of working – whether that be a shift to remote work, putting on a mask or other PPE, or changing the services we provide.

As you know, the Council on Accreditation has been doing the same. Our shift to remote work and virtual reviews are just two examples of how we are consistently adapting, looking forward, thinking about what’s on the horizon, and creating new and effective ways to respond.

Right now, what is going on around us requires us to innovate at a rapid pace. Fortunately, COA has been considering ways to innovate since my arrival in March of 2019. We have been thinking long and hard about the ways we can better support our accredited organizations and the broader field and sector.

With that as our backdrop – with a focus on what we can do to more deeply and meaningfully support you and strengthen your ability to improve the lives of those you serve – I am excited to announce that our Board of Directors has voted to move forward with a due diligence process to explore coming together with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities to form a new organization.

Many of you know the Alliance. In fact, they were one of COA’s founding organizations, back in 1977.

This exploration is the culmination of many months of extensive discussion about how we collectively could be so much more and recognizing that we MUST be so much more in order to meet your needs–to help you meet the pressing demands of our world today.

Human and social service organizations – whether public or private – must demonstrate excellence and achieve results. Accreditation is an integral part of it…and it is only a part. We can, through coming together, support our organizations and the field in so many more ways.

This is entirely consistent with what drew me to COA and with the vision of what we need to be. Coming together will allow us to create new pathways to engagement, add value to accreditation, and create an array of ways to help organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication to have access to supports that were previously not available.

I also want to assure you that we will maintain the independence of accreditation in this new organization. Our focus will always be to ensure the relevance of accreditation standards to the work you’re doing, the rigor of our accreditation processes, and the results you are able to achieve on behalf of the people and communities you all represent.

We look forward to sharing more about this opportunity going forward.

Thank you.

Questions? Comments? Please reach out to us here.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, COA made adaptations to the Site Visit, a foundational part of the accreditation review. Incorporating feedback from our volunteers and organizations, the new virtual review options both allow organizations to move forward with completing their accreditation requirements and prioritize the safety and health of our Volunteers, organizations, and the individuals they serve, all while maintaining the integrity and rigor of our accreditation process. The virtual review is fundamentally designed to minimize in-person interaction amid the pandemic. Conducting interviews and reviewing onsite documents/evidence is completed remotely, through the use of HIPAA-compliant secure environment. When an in-person walkthrough of the organization is needed, assignment of local volunteers is prioritized to minimize travel (and any related concern(s)), and safety guidelines are stressed and followed.

As the pandemic continues to challenge all facets of our lives, we are tested to think differently, creatively, and with flexibility to accommodate for these unpredictable times. The move to virtual reviews required a quick turnaround from planning to implementation, and the continual feedback we have received has helped to refine the process. As a result, COA has increased different ways of communicating expectations and providing support, such as developing a checklist to clarify steps of the virtual review, establishing monthly meetings with leads of the review team, and hosting webinars on virtual reviews for organizations and Volunteers.

The collaboration between Volunteers and organizations has been instrumental in the successful implementation of the virtual review. We are pleased to relay reflections from a Volunteer for COA as she experienced her first virtual review!

COA – The virtual way

-Maddi Noleen, COA Peer Review Volunteer

Have questions about the virtual review process? Reach out to your Accreditation Coordinator, or contact us here.

A big thank you to Peer Reviewer and Executive Director of Champions for Children, Inc. Amy Haile for this guest post!

Few nonprofit organizations are prepared for the transition of executive leadership that is coming and the impact it will have on their mission. 

Every time a nonprofit has a transition at the CEO level, this shift in leadership impacts the organization’s financial stability, strategic direction, and employee engagement. But a 2017 survey found that only 27% of nonprofit organizations have a succession plan. Knowing the impact of executive transition on the ability of the organization to maintain a focus on delivering services to meet its mission, the Council on Accreditation (COA) requires a succession plan as evidence for its Governance 5.04 Standard: to ensure continuity during transitions in leadership, the organization maintains succession planning procedures and a succession plan. 

As an Executive Director, COA Peer Reviewer, and a doctorate student of public health, I set out on a journey to seek solutions that would help nonprofit organizations bridge the gap to create and sustain their succession planning process.  For this study I interviewed 18 community-based nonprofit organization chief executives to gather insights into the barriers and solutions to succession planning.  

CEO interview results

One of the first observations emerging from the interviews was the shared belief that a nonprofit organization’s current CEO has a responsibility of putting the greater good of the organization and its mission in front of the needs of the individual. For example, there was conversation regarding the need for a resigning CEO to provide extended notice of no less than six months, with a year preferable and two years ideal. It was opined that this length of notice was required to sufficiently prepare the organization for the transition and not believed to be burdensome in the event of a CEO’s retirement. However, many interviewed CEOs noted this type of notice would be unlikely for a CEO seeking another position.  

There was universal agreement from the interviewed CEOs that succession planning is more than planning the replacement of the CEO position. It is about other key positions and building a leadership legacy with leader development within the organization. This theme is about being intentional and the CEO creating opportunities for new leaders to emerge within the organization as well as building external relationships beyond the CEO with the community of funders, partners, donors, as well as local, state, and national organizations. Leadership development comes outside the envelope of ‘management’ and ‘supervision.’ It is about creating and encouraging employees to accept stretch assignments. Several interviewed CEOs saw these types of project-based assignments as a mechanism to create bridges for more employees to be visible within the organization as emerging leaders and an opportunity to address equity. 

A guidebook for best practices

This study culminated in the creation of a ‘Guidebook to Succession Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A quick start framework to start and sustain succession planning.’  This guidebook contains many of the suggested elements outlined in Governance 5.04, such as: 

1. Identifying the critical positions within the organization and their key leadership and management functions. 
2. Describing under what conditions interim authority can be delegated for those positions, including unexpected leadership disruptions and planned departures, and the limitations of that authority. 
3. Outlining to whom various leadership and management functions will be delegated. 
4. Delineating the governing body and staff responsibilities as they relate to transition planning. 
5. Creating a plan for how succession planning and leadership transitions will be communicated to the governing body, staff, and other relevant stakeholders; and 
6. Implementing mechanics that assess readiness to assume leadership positions and for providing training, mentorship, and other leadership development opportunities to support readiness. 

Reviewed by nonprofit leaders, this Guidebook describes succession planning as an iterative process and for leaders to expect the plan to mature with reflection and use. To help begin a pathway forward, the guidebook establishes a three-phase approach: start with emergency planning, adopt a framework for leader development, and establish regular conversations regarding succession planning with organization leadership- including the concept of ‘legacy planning’.

The Guidebook provides a brief background with succession planning based on a thorough literature review, guiding principles based on the themes from this research project, and strategies on how to make the plan work. Woven throughout the guidebook are links and titles of other tools, further learning opportunities, and templates to ease the journey. Finally, the guidebook concludes with a sample plan.

Through a partnership with the Nonprofit Leadership Center (nlctb.org), this Guidebook is included in their Resource page and is available via a PDF downloaded file here.

Amy Haile

Amy Haile is the Executive Director of Champions for Children, Inc., the Tampa Bay region’s leading agency focused on the prevention of child abuse and neglect, which is accomplished through evidence-based family education programs that promote positive parenting and child development. Amy blends 30 years of private and public service experience and is completing a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of South Florida, where she has focused her research on succession planning in nonprofit organizations. Her role as a Peer Reviewer allows her to witness how other family-serving organizations are innovating and implementing best practices across the country.

COA would like to congratulate Alternative Family Services (AFS), a Resource Family Agency and mental health service provider serving Northern California, as winner of the 2020 Innovative Practices Award for its “Enhanced Visitation Model: Foster Care” program!

The Innovative Practices Award identifies, documents, and celebrates examples of successful approaches to management and service delivery practices adopted by our accredited organizations. Too often great ideas are kept in-house, without recognizing their potential to create change beyond. The purpose of the Innovative Practices Award is to amplify the effect of one great idea by elevating it to the national stage and offering it as a resource for direct service providers, leadership, researchers, and advocates across the full spectrum of human services. 

This year, innovation is more important than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged every sector of our society, but it has presented special obstacles for the human and social services field. 2020 has also reinforced the urgent need for better equity, diversity, and inclusion. With that in mind, COA requested that Innovative Practices Award submissions address one or both topics.

This year’s evaluation process began with a preliminary round of submissions in which applicants provided a one-page synopsis of their innovative practice. Four finalists were selected to move forward and submitted their full case studies, which were reviewed by a team of expert judges. The community got to weigh in, as well, with hundreds of public votes making up 5% of each submission’s final score.

You can view the case study of the Enhanced Visitation Model program here.

ABOUT THE ENHANCED VISITATION MODEL PROGRAM

Visitation frequency between parent and child is one of the strongest predictors of successful family reunification within the foster care system. The initial response to the COVID pandemic for many agencies and institutions charged with overseeing family visitation was to restrict face to face services. Even as government and private agencies have begun to reinstitute face-to-face visitation, it is clear that the pandemic will ebb and flow. If visitation is going to be available to all families, some families will need to practice social distancing or utilize virtual technologies during visitation in order to contain contagion and meet foster parent fears and demands for safety. Families involved in the foster care system are often distrustful of how resources are allocated and rules are applied. When restrictions are placed upon parents’ right to visit their child, it is imperative that the process be transparent and equitable. To accomplish its purpose, the visitation experience must also be positive and encourage healthy interaction.

AFS’ Enhanced Visitation Model incorporates risk assessment and visit planning tools to assist staff in developing transparent and equitable visitation plans for all families. They have coupled this with replicable visitation activities or venues that can safely provide a continuum of healthy visit experiences regardless of risk level. Three levels of visitation service delivery address the special needs of families required to adhere to community, social distancing, or quarantine requirements. AFS’ Enhanced Visitation Model is designed to inspire clients and parents to play and communicate freely while minimizing the potential for client and family re-traumatization that can be caused by difficult to enforce rules and restrictive visitation environments. Their Enhanced Visitation Model is intentionally easy to replicate. They hope their model inspires and encourages family visitation providers to address the challenges of the COVID19 environment with innovative and creative visitation practices for all the families they serve.

Learn more about Alternative Family Services at afs4kids.org.