New division of CSS designated as a Community Umbrella Agency by Dept. of Human Services.
Goal is to build a network of partnerships aimed at keeping children safe in their own homes or with foster families in their own neighborhoods.
Catholic Social Services has a proud history of serving vulnerable children throughout metropolitan Philadelphia. Now, a new branch of the agency called Catholic Community Services will focus on building partnerships with other agencies and community resources to provide intensive prevention services for children and their families in an area encompassed by the 2nd, 7th and 8th police districts in Northeast Philadelphia. Case managers, supervisors and administrative support personnel receive eight weeks of intensive training prior to handling their first cases in January 2014.
Last spring, the Philadelphia Department of Human Services unveiled plans to create a network of community-based agencies to provide case management for the city’s at-risk youth. Based on a model called Improving Outcomes for Children, the plan divides the city into ten regions, each entrusted to a designated Community Umbrella Agency (CUA) that will replicate in each community what DHS workers once did under the previous centralized model. The guiding philosophy is that children do best living with their families and receiving services in their own communities.
Integral to this approach is the recruitment of solid foster family environments for at-risk adolescent youth within their own communities. Previously, many such youth were placed in congregate care settings, often a good distance away from the natural support systems available to them in their own neighborhoods. Critical to our plan as a CUA provider is aligning our own well established foster care recruitment process with those of our partner child welfare agencies in Northeast Philadelphia – Jewish Family Services and New Foundations. Together we are committed to raising community awareness about this pressing need and bolstering recruitment of more foster families for older youth, ideally from the very neighborhoods where they live whenever possible. Those interested in more information about becoming a foster family can call Eileen Mullins in CSS foster care at (267) 331-2502.
Agencies submitted proposals to become a CUA in regions where they had a footprint and proven track record. In selecting CSS as a CUA, DHS acknowledged the agency’s 200-year history of providing quality services to children and families in the area. The various entities of CSS that serve youth have regularly been recognized for being high performers in achieving quality outcomes with their clients. Joe Lavoritano, Director of CSS Youth Services, believes that the CUA model will allow CSS and its partner agencies to revolutionize how services are delivered. “It’s a major undertaking to recreate the role of DHS at the neighborhood level, but we feel absolutely confident doing it. This is the future of social services for children in Philadelphia, and we are excited to be a key part of that future.”
Teresa Thompson, who has over 35 years of experience in children’s services with CSS, will serve as Director of Catholic Community Services. She affirms the merits of the CUA approach, rooted in a family strength-based model, has great promise, and she is ready to seize the opportunity to reduce the need for placement by keeping kids safe in their own families: “We have great experience in this field, matched by the tenacity to effectively achieve permanency, and have established partnerships with agencies in this community – CORA, Jewish Family and Children’s Services, and New Foundations – that have a longstanding reputation for quality services, and all have a lot to bring to the table as well.”
We are energized and excited to partner with Catholic Community Services (CCS) in providing child welfare services through the Improving Outcomes for Children (IOC) Model in the Northeast. With the leadership of CCS as the CUA and strong private and community partners, these neighborhood communities will be able to identify resources and services that achieve IOC vision and goals.
– Jennifer Stover, Executive Director, New Foundations, Inc.
Providing child welfare services in Philadelphia for over 158 years, we are proud to partner with CSS to recruit, train and certify foster and kinship homes in the Northeast, and support both foster and birth families to achieve the goals of safety, permanency and well-being.
– Nancy Fagan, Executive Director, Jewish Family and Children’s Service
As a natural and logical partner to many families and organizations in the Greater Northeast for over forty years, touching hundreds of thousands of lives in that time, we are delighted to continue that work with Catholic Social Services, solidifying a partnership that has been a long and healthy one for each agency and for the families and communities that we both serve.
– Mary Doherty, Director of Community Services, CORA Services, Inc.
Frank McFadden, Director of Quality Assurance for the new CUA, believes that this approach “takes social work back to its roots, depending on a network of familiar community resources, not a centralized bureaucracy.” Frank grew up in this region of the city, so he is “coming home” to do the work of strengthening families and empowering communities. Constance Gilmore, Case Management Director for CUA, believes it will be vitally important to reinvigorate supportive relationships in these neighborhoods, for the good of all, especially children: “Civic organizations, church groups, local businesses – they all need to be engaged. It’s all about neighbors helping one another, making connections, enabling the community itself to make the changes that need to be made.”
