January 2004

If there is one criticism of Children's Services, it is that it tends to focus on the negative # that government must intervene in families that are placing their children at risk.

The provincial government is attempting to address this with a more proactive approach through the Alberta Response Model (ARM). Region 2 CFSA#s mission, to assist families and communities to provide safe and nurturing environments for children supports both the Ministry ARM service delivery philosophies and social work practices which actively engages each client in increasing responsibility for their own well being and goal setting to achieve and measure the extent to which our services have made a difference. For the last year, the Authority has been exploring a program called Looking After Children (LAC) which assists the Authority in fulfilling and monitoring our role as a corporate parent of children in care.

LAC was introduced in Great Britain in 1991 in response to concern about the ability of the child welfare systems to provide good care to children and youth. The concept and philosophy was that child welfare agencies must better "parent" children in their care. One of the main tenants of the LAC model emphasizes maximizing positive outcomes instead of the traditional goal of reducing harm for children parented in/by child welfare systems.

LAC is based on looking at the potential of each child, and evaluating the needs of the child on seven developmental dimensions: health, education, identity, family and relationships, social presentation, emotional and behavioral development and self-care.

CanLAC, a Canadianized version of the original tool, arrived in the mid 1990s. Like it#s British counterpart, it is a strengths-based model that moves beyond harm reduction to maximizing well-being and aims to achieve outcomes for children and youth in care that are similar to children in the general population.

At its core is a dialogue between the child, the caregiver and the child#s worker, in order to create a comprehensive and collaborative plan to guide and monitor the development of the child. The LAC tool, further allows for a systematic evaluation of child outcomes through data aggregation, which in turn supports the development of a national database regarding the experiences and outcomes of children in care. By increasing our knowledge about Canada#s children in care, changes and investments can be made to provide better care to these children.

On a local level, this information allows the Region to better plan for children enabling the Authority to channel resources where they are needed most, and to evaluate the success of our interventions.

September 2002, Authority trained case managers, foster care workers, enhanced child counsellors, and supervisors in the CanLAC model. Foster parents and other agency staff also attended the training, and learned about the tool, its use and benefits. Stage 1 Implementation, introduction of the programs required each case manager choosing two children with whom to complete the Assessment and Action Record (AAR). In those situations where possible, professionals from Saamis and McMan, as well as foster parents, played a role with the child, in helping to complete the assessments of their individual needs and circumstances. After the completion of the extensive needs assessment, AAR#s were used in completing service plans with goals utilizing information gathered in the tool. The information gathered assists in developing plans for each child that is proactive, rather than reactive based. This part of the Implementation was completed by January 2003.

Our goal is to complete an Assessment and Action Record for all children who come into care under permanent guardianship status. The Looking After Children and the framework for assessment for children in need and their families are complementary case management tools ,which assist us in developing plans for children and families that are child centred and family focused.