About Us
Florida's Center for the Advancement of Child Welfare Practice (The Center) was established to provide needed information and support to Florida’s professional child welfare stakeholders. Funding is provided through a contract with the Department of Children and Families. The Center’s mission is to support and facilitate the identification, expansion, and transfer of expert knowledge and best practices in child welfare case practice, direct services, management, finances, policy, and organizational development to child welfare and child protection stakeholders throughout Florida. Operating within the University of South Florida’s College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute (FMHI), the Center serves Child Protective Investigation professionals of DCF and various Sheriff’s Offices, Child Welfare Legal Services provided by DCF and the Attorney General or State’s Attorney Offices, and Community–Based Care Lead Agencies.
The Center functions under the guidance of a joint statewide Steering Committee of stakeholders who act similarly to a Board of Directors. The Steering Committee’s mission is as follows:
The Steering Committee will establish the vision for excellence in the protection of children and promotion of families. Through oversight and guidance to the Center for the Advancement of Child Welfare Practice, strategies will be developed to ensure sustained support of customer needs in addition to addressing solutions for emerging issues.
Statewide Steering Committee Members
Mike Carroll
Programs Director, SunCoast Region DCF
Matthew Claps, Chief - Policy and Training
DCF Office of Family Safety
Greg Kurth, Exec. Vice President
Family Services of Metro-Orlando, Inc.
Jeff Rainey, CEO
Hillsborough Kids, Inc.
Jim Walker
Broward County Sheriff’s Office
Kimberley Welles
Family Safety Program Manager, Southeast Zone DCF
DCF Contract Manager
Joel Atkinson, DCF Office of Provider Relations
Primary Objectives of The Center
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Ensure timely and consistent information and training to Florida's child welfare professionals emphasizing easy access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, resulting in one right answer accessible to all users statewide on demand.
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Link customers to resources, innovations, and evidence-based models and best practices throughout the country.
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Provide virtual meetings, live training and educational events, and on-line collaborative forums that facilitate communication and information sharing among Florida's child welfare professionals and related stakeholders such as foster parents, youth, and education professionals.
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Provide consistent and authoritative answers to frequently asked questions posed by the Center’s customers and disseminate statewide in cooperation with the Family Safety Program Office.
Services
Knowledge Base
A fully searchable on-line knowledge base is built around current rules and policies, embedded links to relevant Florida State and Federal statutes and rules, recent decision memoranda or policy interpretations, fiscal requirements, national best practices, research, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with authoritative answers. The Center processes requests from customers for policy clarification or interpretation by acquiring answers from the DCF and posting those in the Center database. Knowledge base access is available on-line to all users 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Collaboration
The collaboration component serves as an interactive on-line information-sharing portal where peers and experts can interact with each other and share documents. This component features video conferencing, video streamed educational and training presentations, and other interactive functions designed to facilitate learning, information sharing, and identification of training and technical issues for inclusion in the Center's services.
Web Events
The Center sponsors Live Meetings and other web conferencing services for stakeholder customers. Interactive web events may be coordinated by the Center or by the leadership of each stakeholder agency without the need for Center involvement. Trainings, meetings, workgroup events, etc. are among the many ways this service can be used. The Center provides training and support in using these services at the request of stakeholder members.
Service Limits
The Center does not establish or interpret policy, statute, or rules. The Center does not engage in subjective discussions or exchanges about such matters and does not provide advice or information about operational matters. The Center does not provide case-, family-, or child-specific services.
Customer Service
The Center makes every decision and takes every action with the thought of excellence in customer service and responsiveness in mind. The Center will rapidly acquire and disseminate information to its child welfare customers using innovative technology and provide efficient, timely, and standardized content. Please assist us in meeting your needs and expectations. We welcome input, feedback, and suggestions from you via e-mail and/or discussion forums as frequently as possible.
Center Personnel
Donald N. Policella, Center Director Kristopher Adler, Technical Assistant
Pam Menendez, Knowledge Management Administrator Lisa Coy, Knowledge Manager
Gwen McClain, Operations Coordinator/QI
Roxann McNeish, Knowledge Manager
Ron Menard, Center IT Programming and Support
John Moore, Knowledge Manager
Pat Uber, Office Assistant
The University of South Florida is one of the nation's top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community- engaged, four-year public universities as designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. USF was awarded more than $360 million in research contracts and grants in FY 2007/2008. The university offers 219 degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate, specialist and doctoral levels, including the doctor of medicine. The university has a $1.8 billion annual budget, an annual economic impact of $3.2 billion, and serves more than 46,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and Lakeland. USF is a member of the Big East Athletic Conference.