This is one of the areas where the work with the neighborhood Collaboratives is so essential. True reform of the system will require new relationships and sustained partnerships between the agency and the community, churches, schools, other District agencies, and neighborhood partners. Third, the agency has to devote resources to supporting a stable and qualified work force. In fact, the staffing of the agency is better today than it was in 1989 and 1991. However, turnover is still amazingly high, running probably about 50 percent.
Workers come to the agency right out of school.
They receive little or no training. They are inadequately supervised, and many of them then leave in frustration. The earlier testimony about the fact that foster parents who are aggressive in advocating for the needs of their children are sometimes ostracized within the system is all too true. The agency has to recruit foster parents, train them, monitor them, but also support them and include them as partners in the parenting of children. They also have to move forward with establishing a functioning kinship care program, which is so essential to the care of many children in the District of Columbia.