Unit Overview: The purpose of this unit is to provide new child welfare professionals with an understanding of their mission and the legal underpinnings of that mission upon which DCF’s Child Welfare/Child Protection Unit is built. Learning Objectives: Discuss DCF’s core mission and vision. Explain the purpose of Florida’s Welfare Protection System. Explain the law and policy undergirding the mission of the FL DCF Trainer Instructions and Script: Display slide 8.1.4: Unit 8.1: DCF Mission and Legal Basis (PG:) Display 8.1.5: Learning Objectives (PG:) Display Slide 8.1.6: Formula for the Unsafe Child (PG:) Say: In your last module, you learned that as the result of many different things, including domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, among other things, children become unsafe. This lack of safety occurs when there is a vulnerable child is in the presence of a danger threat, and the parent/caregiver has insufficient capacity to protect the child. Display Slide 8.1.7: The State’s Protective Role with Children (PG:) Say: This module describes the work of the Florida Department of Children and Families and its formal and informal community partners in its essential work of protecting vulnerable children and promoting parent/caregiver and family recovery and resilience. the parent/caregiver is unwilling and/or unable to make the essential changes – and sustain those changes – so that they can protect their child, it is the work of the Department – also through the work of Florida’s Child Protection System – to terminate the parent’s rights
While participants are doing this, create a table on your flipchart, with each cell representing one of the groups. This will be the way you keep track of who gets the right answers and who gets answers right. Take up all cards and shuffle them extensively so that there is no order to them and everyone’s input is thoroughly mixed. From this point forward, participants work in their groups. The group who gets the most questions right each gets a Starbucks card for $10 (or some other prize as directed by DCF). Over the next 25-30 minutes, go through as many questions as possible. Ask each question, and the first person who raises their hand gets called on. If they are correct, their group gets the point. If they are incorrect, then ask the question again and pick the first person to raise their hand. Continue to do this until the question is correctly answered. Tally up the points. Activity STOP Display Slide 8.1.21: Evidence (PG:) Say: As we turn our attention to the next topic, I want to remind you again what a dependency case is. A dependency case is one that comes before the Courts, and is in child abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment. We use the term ‘dependency’ to describe the child who is dependent upon the state and the legal system to provide him or her with the protection and related services to keep him or her safe and to promote his or her well-being. For the child to be dependent upon the state, it is essential that you as a child welfare professional make sure you base your dependency recommendations on evidence. These include: Direct Evidence. Direct evidence would be an eyewitness account of an event or the actual statements of witnesses. Circumstantial Evidence. This is evidence that may a judge to deduce a certain fact from other facts that have been proven. Circumstantial evidence is a step away from eyewitness account and is less persuasive in court. For example: circumstantial evidence would be a neighbor hearing a child scream but not witnessing the abuse.