Investing in Better Child Welfare Outcomes – A Balancing Act
By Brenda Donald, MPA
Director’s Cut
Welcome back to Director’s Cut, our standing series featuring former agency directors from across the country and ideological spectrum.
We invite former leaders to say it straight— what do they wish policymakers, advocates, and philanthropy knew when crafting policy.
Investing in Better Child Welfare Outcomes – A Balancing Act
By Brenda Donald, MPA
To be an effective child welfare leader, it’s not enough to be expert in policies, the budget process, direct service, and management.
You need all that, and you need to be savvy on navigating the political process in a nonpartisan way.
The average tenure of a child welfare leader is less than two years.
And they don’t just get a short runway; they usually start when an agency is in crisis or in response to high-profile child tragedies
Even when a child welfare agency is in relatively good shape, the new leader always has a learning curve but still needs to hit the ground running.
Courting Your Critics
When I assumed my role as Cabinet Secretary for the Maryland Department of Human Services, I made a list of the key players I would need to meet with, including legislators, advocates, and providers.
One of my first meetings was with the powerful chair of one of the legislative Committees.
He was a key power center, with authority over our funding and the accumulated clout of 20 years in office. He was also our Department’s most vocal critic.
My team told me he was a huge problem, and that his legislative agenda was influenced by an advocacy community that was fed up with the department’s terrible outcomes over many years.
As a leader, I understood how the sting of his criticisms led my new team to get defensive. At the same time, he saw a need for deeper change that registered with me.
I was new on the scene with a credible track record from running the Washington, DC child welfare agency, but everyone was impatient and wanted immediate change.
I knew I had to model a different type of leadership for our team by positioning the department as a credible entity capable of doing its job.
Cultivating Common Ground
Maybe I could have been more diplomatic, but I decided on a more direct approach. My opening statement in my meeting with the chair was:
“Everybody warned me that I would have to fight you. I’m hoping we can find common ground and work together to improve the department. I know we both want better outcomes for the kids and families we serve.”
That opened the door for a productive partnership during my tenure.
Of course we didn’t agree on everything, but we found ways to agree on important issues.
The chairman, the governor, and I all wanted to reduce the state’s use of group homes for children in foster care, for different reasons:
The governor hated group homes because they were costly and often poorly run;
The committee chair hated them because of what he heard from constituents- they brought more traffic, noise, and police activity to the neighborhoods they were concentrated in;
My concern was that kids should be raised in families, and only placed in congregate care for episodic treatment and stabilization.
At that time, over 15 percent of Maryland’s foster care children were in group homes, well above the national average of five percent.
So we all had an incentive to address the issue, even if we had totally different motivations to bring us to it.
Crafting Compromise
The chair was considering legislation that would simply reduce the number of annual group homes licensed.
I didn’t want to reject his agreement on a core aspect of the issue, but I also knew that reducing the number of kids in group homes had to be part of a broader child welfare systems transformation.
Reducing group home utilization would take time, beginning with reducing the number of kids entering foster care, increasing kinship placements and recruiting and retaining more foster homes.
So my team developed a comprehensive plan called Place Matters.
I was able to convince the chair that I had a viable plan and that legislation was not necessary, and perhaps even counterproductive.
Instead, I outlined a comprehensive approach for him; preventing unnecessary foster care, increasing use of kinship care, and better supporting foster parents.
I showed him that these approaches worked, both with evidence and my track record using them in DC.
I committed to regular, public-facing reports on progress via a Place Matters report card.
As the department made progress, the chair could claim victory on his agenda as we proved the department could deliver on our commitments.
What could have led to a tenure of contention became a win-win; in just two years, we cut the number of kids in congregate care by half.
These experiences taught me a few things to consider for a better balancing act that I would share with any new leader:
Be impatient, but realistic. Change takes time, but there must be a sense of urgency. As a policymaker, consider what that looks like.
Is legislation actually necessary, or might it inadvertently impose hamstrings that slow and undermine progress?
Make informed cost-benefit analyses – is there evidence that the policy makes sense/cents? What are the possible unintended consequences?
Look at the whole picture – context matters. It’s never just one thing.
Is it worth it to go down a rabbit hole when that means leaving the rabbit free to enjoy the rest of the garden?
Look for the common ground – if the goals are better outcomes for kids and families, there is room to work together, even if there’s a lot you disagree on.
Brenda Donald has over 25 years in senior leadership human services roles, including serving three Mayors and one Governor in Cabinet level positions.