Exploring new solutions for a broken system

America's child welfare system, intended to protect our most vulnerable children and families, stands out as one of the nation's most troubled public systems. Each year, there are almost one million victims of child abuse and neglect and more than 540,000 children in foster care, more than double the number of children in care just 20 years ago. 126,000 children have been permanently removed from their parents, but are waiting, sometimes for years, to find safe and permanent homes. 19,000 young people aged out of the child welfare each year, most without the necessary education, health care, employment skills, or family connections needed to succeed. Families continue to struggle with substance abuse, domestic violence, and mental health problems without adequate treatment options. Grandparents and other relatives step forward to raise children in crisis, only to find that they cannot access essential supports.

Looking beyond the government for effective reform strategies

Children and families continue to suffer because the system that serves them is beyond broken. While important and well-funded efforts are underway to reform the federal government's legislative and fiscal role in the child welfare system, meaningful and sustainable partnerships between the child welfare system and the private sector are few and far between. Successful technology and business strategies rarely make it to the children and families who need them most. Too often, child welfare professionals assume that profit-driven businesses have no genuine interest in being change agents for children and families. At the same time, the private sector mistakenly concludes that there is no market for new and profitable products and services in the child welfare field.

Antiquated ways of doing business hurts children and families

The current reform movement occurring within child welfare is mainly the result of legal action taken against the child welfare systems and the failure of states to meet the national outcome standards. In most cases, we are simply witnessing the reaction to this pressure. We believe that while many improvements have occurred or are in process, there is much more opportunity to accelerate positive change through innovation.

Introducing a New Solution: Stewards Of Change

To address these challenges in a new and entrepreneurial way a consortium of human service and private industry leaders formed a new nonprofit, Stewards of Change™.

The Stewards mission is:

Advancing sustainable improvements that transform systems of care by integrating entrepreneurial solutions
from public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

This new organization will bring together influential leaders from the business and child welfare communities to develop, test and implement successful sector-blending strategies, develop new and more efficient operational models, and leverage emerging marketing, research, financing and technology solutions to transform the lives of at-risk children and families.

We believe that public-private partnerships can go way beyond putting foster children profiles on milk cartons and bank statements to truly transform the lives of millions of at-risk children and families and the child welfare professionals who serve them. We believe that with if the right people are brought to the table, that evolutionary business practices can be created and effectively leveraged to improve the efficiency and overall functionality of the child welfare system. The intended outcome of Stewards is to give children, families, and communities the futures they deserve while providing businesses the opportunity to do well by doing good and use the billions of dollars which are currently being wasted in the system in more productive and effective ways.

Through conferences, workshops, publications and in-market implementation Stewards of Change will attract individual champions of change and innovation within and outside the current system. Stewards of Change will bring together key leaders in child welfare, business, finance, government, academia, and the courts together to innovate in new and exciting ways. Some of the initial areas of focus include:

• New Capital Formation/Funding Methodologies
• Stewardship Grant™
• Six Sigma Process Improvement/Business Process Improvement
• Supply Chain For Human Services™
• Consumer Research For Branding, Marketing And Communications
• Technology Solutions
• Field Level Data Collection For Compliance
• Best Practice Case Management
• Values Based Leadership & Development
• Rubric Based Case Management Training Methodologies
• Administrative Service Organizations
• Recruitment And Retention
• Technology Outsourcing
• Training - Management and Social Workers
• Marketing, Branding and Communications
• Human Resources

Delta, which is the icon used in Stewards logo represents our pursuit of innovative and positive change that is at the heart of the Stewards mission.

Stewards of Change Inaugural Conference: An intimate gathering of the best and brightest child welfare, business, and academic thought leaders.

Stewards of Changes in partnership with the New America Foundation will be hosting a 2 day conference in the Autumn of 2005. With support from Annie E. Casey Foundation and The Yale School of Management, we will bring together 40 high performance individuals from the child welfare, business, and academic arenas to lay the groundwork for innovative public-private partnerships that will transform the lives of abused and neglected children and their families. We plan to include leading entrepreneurs from both the child welfare and related social service fields and senior-level business executives from diverse manufacturing, technology and service industries, venture capitalists, and experts from the marketing, advertising, and public relations fields.

Our goals for the conference will be to provide a forum to create and harness new ideas and strategies that haven't been discussed before in the child welfare context. We also hope to generate sufficient enthusiasm and commitment to expand and replicate this work both in the field through innovative pilots and also through other national and regional conferences. We hope to create a cadre of Stewards who will serve to promote, enhance and sustain entrepreneurship throughout child welfare.