Parent Partner, Native Liaison Navigator, and Shared Leadership Advisory Group

The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to define the County’s minimum requirements, solicit proposals, and gain adequate information by which the County may evaluate the services offered by Proposers that fall within the scope of services as described in this RFP. The County of Solano, Department of Health and Social Services (H&SS), Child Welfare Services (CWS), hereinafter referred to as the “County,” intends to secure a contract with a qualified proposer to provide Peer mentoring services through a Parent Partner model to assist parents who are engaged in the Court Family Maintenance and the Family Reunification process.

About the Parent Partner Model

According to research conducted at UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare, “The Parent Partner program is one of a number of recent innovations in child welfare that draws upon the strengths of families. The Parent Partner program seeks to enlist as support, mothers and fathers who have experienced child removal services and reunification. These individuals are trained and supported to provide direct services to parent clients seeking reunification with their children. The program design intention is for Parent Partners to serve as mentors, guides, and advocates for current parent clients. Parent Partners can be flexible in the roles they play and in responding to a range of needs that parent clients might present. The principal goal of their work, however, is to help parent clients gain awareness of their rights and responsibilities, and to assist parents toward reunification with their children. Because of their unique experience as former clients of the child welfare system, Parent Partners offer a perspective to parents that differs from that of social workers and other allied professionals.

Program Goals

The Child Welfare Services Parent Partner program has two important goals; 1) parents’ voices will be represented in stakeholder meetings to facilitate changes within our system and inform our ongoing practice, and 2) parents will receive support upon the opening of their case and during their initial Child and Family Team Meeting by a former system involved parent who can assist with education of the child welfare process and engagement in creating Case Plans with parents. Solano County Child Welfare Services is focused on the importance of achieving timely reunification for youth and believe that a Parent Partner Program supports this focus.

Commitment to Restorative Child Welfare

Additionally, Solano County Child Welfare Services is committed to being a Restorative Child Welfare system which seeks to support all parents and specifically fathers in developing and maintaining responsible, safe, and committed relationships with their children. Solano County is dedicated to fostering a father friendly culture. We recognize and honor the critical role that fathers play in healthy development of their children.

Reference: 1 Anthony, E.K., Berrick, J.D., Cohen, E., Wilder, E., (July 2009). Partnering with Parents Promising Approaches to Improve Reunification Outcomes for Children in Foster Care. Executive Summary, UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare.

The Department of Health and Social Services (H&SS) provides numerous services to the residents of Solano County. It has many divisions including Administration, Behavioral Health, Child Welfare Services (CWS), Employment and Eligibility Services, Public Health Services, and Medical Services.

In Child Welfare Services, the mission is to protect children from abuse and neglect by strengthening families or finding safe, permanent homes so that they can grow into healthy, productive adults. Child Welfare Services includes Hotline, Emergency Response 24/7 Services, Intensive Family Maintenance and Family Reunification Services, Permanent Placement Services, Supportive Transition Services, and Adoption Services.

Child Welfare Services is a state-supervised, County-administered program. The program’s purpose is to prevent, identify, and respond to allegations of child abuse and neglect. Families in the child welfare system receive services so that children can remain safely in their homes, and children who are temporarily removed from their homes can reunify with their families. For cases in which children are unable to reunify with their families, efforts are made to find a permanent home through adoption or guardianship.

In 2012, California began efforts to develop a California Child Welfare Core Practice Model (CPM) that is intended as a framework to support the state’s child welfare social workers and leaders in sustaining and improving practice in all California Counties. An essential piece of CPM is the practice behaviors which acts as guidelines for child welfare staff, with one focus behavior being engagement. Within the engagement behaviors, the CPM emphasizes the importance of listening to the family and demonstrating you care about their thoughts and experiences, demonstrating an interest in connecting with the family and helping them identify and meet their goals, identifying and engaging family members who are important to the family, and supporting and facilitating the family’s capacity to advocate for themselves. Solano County began implementation of the CPM in 2017, and we continue to strive to fully integrate this model and find new ways to effectively engage with the families we work with.

Alongside the statewide introduction of CPM, the state’s Continuum of Care Reform introduced the Child and Family Team (CFT) process in 2016 as a key component of ensuring the well-being of children, youth, and families served by child welfare. CFTs are based on the belief that children, youth, and families have the capacity to resolve their problems if given sufficient support and resources to help them do so. The California Department of Social Services indicates that CFTs are a strength-based approach to practice that recognizes families are experts in their own lives and can achieve success when they have an active role in creating and implementing solutions. Since the statewide role out of CFTs, Solano County has begun working toward the identification of families’ teams and assisting families in creating healthy and supportive networks of individuals who can assist them in safely parenting their children. In addition to this, CFT meetings have been utilized to work with the identified CFTs on case planning for families, to ensure parents are provided with all the support possible throughout this process.

While the integration of the CPM Model and CFT processes has assisted the County in concentrating our practice more on family engagement, we strive to enhance our engagement with families and continue to work toward further alignment with these frameworks. Our most recent County Self-Assessment in 2023 revealed service gaps and barriers in both the education of parents on the CWS process and support provided to parents throughout their time spent working within the system. Given our commitment to improving our practice, Solano County is seeking a qualified proposer to provide Parent Partner services that will assist with the following: continuous evaluation of our practices through collaboration and ongoing stakeholder feedback, engaging our parents from the onset of their case, specifically during initial Child and Family Team meetings and throughout the case planning process, and seeking resources for parents to ensure all of their needs are met to allow them to safely and effectively provide care for their children on a long term basis. The continuation of the Parent Partner program will allow us to provide a more holistic approach to case management with families and will further engage parents at both the case and systems-level, ensuring their voices facilitate change in all aspects of our Child Welfare System.