With over 21 years of human services experience, Will Jones is an expert in child welfare, juvenile justice and behavioral health services. As the Chief of Programs at Eckerd, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit child and family service organizations, Will helped the organization see substantial growth nationally in direct service work and consulting. He also served in leadership roles at three other award winning non-profit organizations. Early in his career, Will led the effort to make Orange County (FL)Youth Family Services Division the second public child welfare agency in the state to become COA accredited. He is married and a devoted husband and father to five children.
Did you know that January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month in the United States? If not, you may not know that researchers estimate that human trafficking is a global industry with revenues from $51 to $99 billion annually, up from $32 billion just a few years ago. In this case,
When protecting children, “entity resolution” can reduce the things agencies don’t know they don’t know. It’s a technological capability I wish I’d had when I led a child protective services agency. I have been involved in hundreds of determinations that would alter a child’s life trajectory. I was comfortable with
Could you imagine running a business with a 35-90% annual turnover rate? What if the average time to fill a position was anywhere between 3-12 months? This alone would cripple most organizations, but is a common reality in state and local child welfare agencies. High turnover and vacancy rates are
In my last blog post, I introduced common concerns I’ve heard about predictive analytics in child well-being efforts. In this post, I want to address those concerns and reassure leaders and advocates that predictive analytics can be a tremendous boon to our ability to help kids and ease the burden on
As state and local government leaders and community advocates explore how predictive analytics can improve child well-being outcomes, many questions and potential concerns surface. It is critical to understand that government youth services agencies across the United States have used actuarial Risk & Need Assessment tools for many years. Many
“We could send a juvenile justice youth to Harvard for what we pay for incarceration, and we don't get very good outcomes.” That was said by Gladys Carrion when she was Director of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. (She’s now Commissioner of NYC Administration for
“What keeps you awake at night?” my colleague asked me. At the time, I was a child protective services administrator responsible for thousands of at risk children on any given day. While there were many things that weighed on my mind, worker turnover created many sleepless nights, and days filled
What happened to the adage, "What gets measured, gets done"? Though progress is being made, there are too many child protection agencies that have yet to understand the profound impact data-informed policy and practice have on performance outcomes, as well as staff retention and satisfaction. Without dipping deep into the
A Vermont Department of Children Families (DCF) worker was murdered last month. The lead suspect is the mother of a child that was previously removed from her care and placed in foster care. This tragedy illustrates the challenges and risks that workers have in the field of serving at risk
I remember when I first started in public child welfare 21 years ago and the word "outcomes" was introduced. At that time, we believed that if it felt good and children and families seemed happy that we were doing a good job - those were our outcomes. We were wrong.
In 1988 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May as National Foster Care Month as a way to recognize foster parents for opening their homes to and caring for children in need. This annual celebration has grown to generate awareness of foster care and a recognition of all involved. The children, foster
