Safety Assessment and Planning Revisions

The CPS safety intervention process plays a critical role towards achieving DCF’s Putting Families First effort to keep families and children together by serving them in-home with resources and services. As part of Putting Families First, the Division of Safety and Permanence (DSP) convened a workgroup charged with identifying opportunities to support case management practice approaches and strategies in order to serve more children in their family homes. As a result of this workgroup and input from various stakeholders, DSP identified a need to make improvements to the current safety planning and assessment process.

Safety Revisions Overview

The Safety Revisions workgroup is charged with making strategic revisions to Wisconsin’s safety analysis and planning process. Currently, the language and process for safety assessment and planning in Wisconsin is complex, cumbersome and inconsistent statewide. This can result in a narrow identification of safety threats without holistic consideration of the family. The resulting experience disempowers families and impacts outcomes. Revisions to the safety planning process aim to engage families early in the child protective services’ (CPS) safety assessment process, gather rich information about their family to inform understanding of safety and address the impacts of implicit biases and systems of oppression. This work is divided into two categories: 

  1. Changes to safety threat language 
  2. Changes to process and documentation in eWiSACWIS

Safety Threat Language Revisions 

Objectives

  • Refine the safety assessment process and safety threat language to be culturally responsive, equitable and just.
  • Refine and improve the safety assessment and planning framework that facilitates upfront safety decisions that are informed by engagement with families to guide the case process and keep more children and youth safely in their homes. 
     

Information & Resources 

Safety Revisions Contact Information 

For further questions about the Safety Planning Revisions workstream, please contact  DCFMBBSWBCWPP@wisconsin.gov