The provision of child protection services varies around the world.* We’ll look at some applications of Lean and Six Sigma in child protective services in the United States from Oklahoma, California, Arizona and Tennessee and finish with a video on what a job with such an agency is like.
[This report gives examples from Canada, Sweden, Belgium and the Gaza Strip]
Pinnacle Plan Measures: Semi-annual summary report August 2017: Oklahoma
This report from the Oklahoma Department of Human Services discusses how the welfare of children is being managed.
Pages 74 and 80 of the report describe two green belt projects.
- Page 74: A Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Project was initiated in January 2017 to review the current placement process in Region 3 and create solutions to identified inefficiencies.
- Page 80: In January 2017, four members of the CWS (Child Welfare Services) team embarked on the journey of investing a significant amount of time in the Lean Six Sigma program to complete a green belt project focused on overall system changes needed within the TFC (Therapeutic Foster Care Home) program.
You can read the report here.
Lean Six Sigma Project for Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services: California
A brief news article titled “Moving Families from a Hotline to a Helpline receives a Gold Eagle award” from the Child Data Network mentioned the Lean Six Sigma project that tripled the number of families connected to prevention supports and cut enrollment wait times in half.
Copy and paste the following link into your browser for an in-depth look at the project:
Lean Project in Arizona’s Department of Child Services: Arizona
An article titled “Ducey embraces ‘lean’ management philosophy” mentions the Lean success in Arizona’s Department of Child Safety (DCS).
DCS chose its infamous backlog of inactive cases for its “deep dive,” an inaugural project that can be used to demonstrate how the rest of an agency should implement Lean. DCS was able to reduce the backlog to fewer than 8,000 cases, as opposed to nearly 16,000 a year ago.
You can access the article here.
Tennessee Child and Family Services Program Improvement Plan: Tennessee
A report titled “Tennessee Child and Family Services Review Round 3 Program Improvement Plan” covers goals, strategies/interventions, and key activities.
Pages 26 and 27 describe a Lean Six Sigma project
“The Team Leader Mentoring Enhancement Project is designed to thoughtfully use Lean Six Sigma processes such as the A3, Go See Process, SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers), and Swim Lane Mapping after shadowing select Team Leaders over a two day process to identify:
- The approximate time certain tasks take
- Tasks that do not add value to work
- Wastes (waiting, overproduction, re-work due to errors, unnecessary repetition)
You can read the full report here.
What is it like to work for Child Protective Services?
See what a job with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is like in this video from Texas DFPS.
You can watch the video here.
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