Kristin Gardner, Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services

Stress doesn't just impact the individual. It has a ripple effect. If you are physically ill, mentally depressed, or burnt out, there won't be much left for your partner, children, or family. Stress also negatively impacts employers. The World Health Organization estimates that stress costs American businesses $300 billion dollars a year (Martin, 2012).

One of the best approaches to self-care is the proactive coping approach. By building a reserve of resources and anticipating difficulties and challenges, you are able to utilize your resources. This becomes more effective as you evaluate the process to cultivate additional resources.

Participate in a Distance Learning Opportunity Just For Supervisors!

Workshop: Wellness for Supervisors

Child welfare supervisors experience a great deal of stress just due to the nature of the job itself. Being effective means meeting expectations of the agency, the community and the supervisees, all the while making sure clients are receiving quality services. Overseeing large caseloads, administrative pressures, teaching skills and making critical decisions can all add to the stress. All of this means it is imperative that supervisors find ways to maintain wellness through healthy stress management techniques. The goal for this workshop is supervisor wellness and enabling supervisors to employ strategies for maintaining wellness.

Trainer: Karen is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor with a Master's degree in Social Work. She has experience as a supervisor in a Children's Services agency where she supervised 14 child care workers. She is also a Certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and an Ohio Certified Prevention Specialist II. Karen has provided supervision training for over five years and has also provided Stress and Wellness trainings for hundreds of social service workers over the past 25 years.

Nominated by: Brian Wear, East Central Ohio Regional Training Center

Gayle is a Supervisor at Tuscarawas County Job and Family Services. She has worked in Child Welfare for over 27 years, and is recognized for her best practice services. We had a chance to talk to Gayle and ask what best practices she promotes and what advice she could pass on to other supervisors regarding developing confident and competent staff. 

First, to promote consistent quality practice Gayle has created many tools, guides, manuals, articles, and helpful practice hints to guide the caseworkers she supervises.  An excellent example is the guide she created to help caseworkers take foster/adoptive parent inquiry calls. The guide helps caseworkers know what questions to ask and how to respond to tough questions. Guides like these give caseworkers resources for their daily tasks and help promote consistent service delivery. 

Second, Gayle has also worked hard to promote best practice through both supervision and policy creation. Take sibling continuity as an example. Gayle not only works hard with her staff to keep siblings together every day, she has done the extra work necessary to establish the best practice standard within agency policy. Gayle also speaks passionately of finding the right match for every child who needs placement. She isn't satisfied with just looking for an open bed. She and her staff continue searching until they have found the best possible match for each child. As a result, over 80% of children adopted in her county are adopted by the people they were initially placed with, which means fewer moves for children. 

It's this extra effort and lessons learned over 27 years in the field that make Gayle a clear....Supervisor Superstar!

Continuous Quality Improvement Activities

• Developing and Implementing a Case Record Review Process (what to evaluate and what to do with the results)
• Customer/Consumer Satisfaction (how to evaluate and what to do with the results)
• Evaluating Alignment with Best Practice    
• Developing and Implementing Internal Procedures/Standards of Practice
• Implementing Organizational/Practice Changes

Staff Development

• Leadership
• Clinical
• Organization/Time Management    

Community Resource Development

• What's Missing and How Do We Get It
• Establishing a Community Advisory Network

Currently twenty-three counties participate on the Council. Council members determine the agenda for the phone conferences and are able to gather input on a variety of issues from other members during conferences, as well as through an e-mail listserv. This group is a vehicle for finding creative solutions, defining new practice innovations, and making our systems excellent! If you are interested in becoming a member of the Peer to Peer Council please email Trista Piccola. 

• The Caseworker Orientation and Readiness Tool
• The Supervisor Readiness Tool
• Priority Training Opportunities Webpage
• Supervisor Station Webpage
• The CAPMIS Tool Kit
• E-Track Quick Start Guide
• Caregivers' Corner