Providing child protective services is a tricky business.

While almost everyone agrees that children have a right to be protected from child abuse and neglect, many disagree on the best way to do that. When is it appropriate for children to be removed from their homes and taken away from their parents? When is it unnecessary? Is foster care helpful or harmful to kids? How do you balance the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, with the responsibility of society to ensure that all children are raised in a safe, stable environment?

Each case is different; the lines are rarely clear. 

As a result, public opinion on child protective services tends to fall into one of two camps: either that agencies don't do enough to help children and families or that they do too much and overstep their bounds.

I've worked in child protective services for over 20 years. Every day, together with the court, Marion County Children Services makes decisions that impact the lives of children and families. That's the nature of the job. We are as objective as possible in making those decisions, following criteria established by state and federal law and relying on our training, knowledge, and experience. 

For over a year now, our agency has been involved in another activity that we feel will help us improve our services. We are seeking national accreditation through the Council on Accreditation for Children and Family Services. 

By becoming accredited, we will improve the quality of our services and be a model agency that follows practices and procedures that are in the best interest of the people we serve.

The Council on Accreditation (COA) is an independent, not-for-profit accrediting body that was co-founded by the Child Welfare League of America and the Family Service Association.

In order to become accredited, an agency must prove that it follows national standards of best practice - standards which COA develops using panels of professionals, providers, policymakers, and consumers. 

After spending more than a year reviewing and revising our programs, policies, and practices, we submitted a self-study to COA last March. Then, in May, a peer review team from COA visited our agency to confirm that we are doing in practice what we said we were doing on paper. 

The three members of the COA review team were from British Columbia, Indiana, and Florida. All were professionals with extensive experience in child welfare. They spent three days at our agency, interviewing staff, foster parents, clients, court personnel, other community professionals, board members, and local residents. 

As a result of this review, we were given the team's evaluation of our agency's strengths and suggestions for areas of improvement.

One of the greatest strengths noted by the site review team was the level of cooperation and the partnerships that exist between MCCS and other community agencies. Other areas of strength were our manageable caseload sizes, which allow caseworkers to work more closely with their clients, and the experience and training of our staff. 

Many of our internal procedures were also noted as strengths such as the assessment tool we use to evaluate the level of risk of harm to a child, our adoption matching process, our quality assurance program for caseworkers, and our well-organized and comprehensive filing system. 

Several of our programs were considered strengths as well such as IMPRINT which provides local treatment level foster care services, the Independent Living Program which helps older youth in foster care prepare for living on their own, and our school social worker program.

Recently we received a preliminary report from COA that outlines areas we need to address in order to achieve accreditation. Most were in the area of aftercare planning for families upon closing their case. This service is not mandated in Ohio, but by acting on the suggestions of COA and meeting their standard, we should be able to help decrease the need for children and families to come back under protective services in the future.

Another area we will address is notifying children of their rights in the same way that we notify parents of rights, and also actively involving children in service planning.

Achieving accreditation is only the beginning of the process. COA standards are evaluated and revised continuously, and it is the responsibility of every accredited agency to monitor and stay in compliance with those changes. Once accredited, we will undergo a re-accreditation evaluation every four years.

Becoming accredited is no magic pill that will transform us into the agency everyone loves. For many, we will always be the agency they "love to hate." But it is evidence that we are doing everything we can to provide high quality services to Marion County residents.

This agency is not just doing what the state says it has to do, and it's not just meeting federal requirements, but it's also voluntarily doing what a private, not-for-profit organization says is ultimately in the best interest of children and families. And that's what it is all about.