Signs of safety.

• Author: Malaryk, Heather D.

Posted By: Heather D. Malaryk

Signs of Safety are a child protection casework practice model currently being rolled out by Child & Family Services in Alberta. It was developed in the 1990s in Australia by Andrew Turnell and Steve Edwards in response to the question: "Is there a better way of doing child protection casework?" For three years, they collaborated with child protection workers to study what was working well and what was not, to come up with a strengths-based, future-focused method of assessing risk of harm to children. Signs of Safety have been shown to reduce the number of children coming into care and the number of children returning into care. In Alberta, Child & Family Services is divided into regions throughout the province and different regions and their respective offices are at different stages of implementing this framework into action here for our families.

The Signs of Safety model is a departure from traditional casework. Social workers were the experts under the old model. The social worker would take responsibility for children's safety while caregivers often felt forced into doing things to have the children returned. This model created a significant amount of anxiety in both the social worker and the family members. Family members would be given a 'to do' list of tasks and files were closed when the list was completed. Signs of Safety put the family at the forefront as experts on their own needs. The responsibility for the safety of children remains with the family and they decide how the social worker's safety concerns will be addressed. Focus is placed on what is working for the family and expanding on those areas of strength. Lastly, traditional casework can replace the voices of parents and children with social work speak. Signs of Safety encourage the use of common, plain language and concrete examples. For example, in the old model, a social worker's concern could be: "I am concerned that mom has a mental health diagnosis that might lead to psychological harm to the child". A Signs of Safety version of the same concern might be: "I am worried that you have some days where you feel so sad that you can't get out of bed and that means Sally isn't getting the helps she needs to get to school in the morning".

One major tool of the Signs of Safety model is mapping. Mapping is a collaborative conversation between the family and the social worker which is used to build an understanding of:

* What are we worried...