The partnership among the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA), Child and Family Policy Institute of California (CFPIC), California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC), and Regional Training Academies (RTAs) is committed to supporting counties and their leadership in the implementation and sustainability of the California Child Welfare Core Practice Model (CPM). Initially supported by the California Child Welfare CPM Directors Institute (DI) (March – December, 2017), Child Welfare Directors and cross-site teams from over 30 CA counties began (at different paces, based on local context) deliberately assessing readiness for CPM implementation planning. Since early 2018, the RTAs have begun to explore and strengthen their own internal capacities and roles for providing implementation support to counties. The success of implementing and scaling the CPM, contextualized to the strengths and needs of counties, depends on the amount and quality of ongoing implementation support at multiple system levels. Strengthening and formalizing local capacities, based on existing, regional infrastructure is critical to extending the leading edge created by the Directors Institute to strengthen ongoing implementation support.
Renée Boothroyd and Robin Jenkins (in partnership with DI Faculty) will continue to support ongoing statewide CPM DI implementation support work that builds counties’ own CPM implementation processes and RTA supports of them. The team will focus on strengthening the internal implementation infrastructure, capacities, and skills of RTA Implementation Support Teams (IST), actively supported by RTA leadership, for the successful and sustainable implementation of the CPM in each region’s counties. To do so, the team will develop External Implementation Support Plans for each RTA, then provide adult learning (virtual) and ongoing behavioral coaching (phone and virtual) for RTA’s guided application and learning as implementation support providers. Finally, the team will guide development of regular cross-RTA peer networking and learning, and co-define and co-create a practice profile for RTA implementation support.
