The Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies

With 110 Agencies, Services Provided Through a Social Work Lens

James F. Purcell, MA, Executive Director, Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies (COFCCA)

Note: James Purcell is the Executive Director of COFCCA, the umbrella organization of not-for-profit agencies that provide children and family services in the State of New York. He was asked to offer his perspective on children and family services by outlining the range of services provided by COFCCA agencies, and addressing the particular roles and opportunities for social workers in those agencies. He also discussed opportunities to prepare for and obtain the LCSW license.

What is the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies?

The Council, better known as COFCCA, is the principal representative organization for nearly all the not-for-profit organizations providing foster care, adoption, family preservation, and special education services in New York State. There are currently about 110 member agencies.

COFCCA works in close collaboration with its members through multiple committees - exploring policies, regulations, and trends affecting their ability to provide quality services to those in their care.

COFCCA maintains a close working relationship with the NYC Administration for Children’s Services and the NYS Office of Child and Family Services - advocating for necessary resources and needed policy and regulatory change.

COFCCA sponsors a competency-based training program for caseworkers in agencies in New York City, using a curriculum commensurate with ever-evolving State and City expectations.

COFCCA further serves its member agency leaders by providing a weekly electronic update that keeps them informed of developments and other activities relevant to child welfare.

What roles do social workers play in your member agencies?

Social workers are the life-blood of our member agencies. They inform all aspects of policy and practice, from direct work with clients to supervisory and executive positions. Child welfare depends to the greatest extent on the field of social work for its understanding and direction.

While social workers play many roles at child welfare agencies - ranging from top executive positions to program directors, counselors, evaluation specialists, researchers, and therapists - their common mission and core training forge a bond that enables them to work exceptionally well together, intra-agency and across agencies. The collegiality of child welfare agencies in responding to crisis reflects their cohesiveness, commitment to social work ethics, and overwhelming concern for the best interests of the children and families.

The varied demands of child welfare services offer social workers the opportunity to function in many different ways - providing direct counseling, group work, advocacy and organizing, training, recreational therapy, research, program planning, and supervision.

Foster care agencies depend on the professional judgment of social workers in planning for children removed from their families, in helping families address the problems that brought their children into foster care, in healing the traumas that result in foster care placement, and in helping foster youth prepare for a productive and positive future.

Social workers also play a key role in determining whether children return home or will need adoptive families. If adoption is the answer, then social workers evaluate the physical and psychological status of the potential parents and their homes to ascertain whether they meet the standards for becoming adoptive parents.

Preventive services programs, which focus on helping families whose children are at risk of foster care placement, are almost all directed by social workers. In these programs, social workers either work directly with families or supervise caseloads, making the crucial determinations about the service needs of the families and their progress in meeting their goals. In these situations, social workers must always be mindful of the safety of the children in the home. Social workers use a variety of modalities in response to the family dynamics that place children at risk.

Because our goal is to improve the recruitment and retention of social workers in child welfare agencies, COFCCA has consistently advocated with the State for tuition assistance and loan forgiveness to support current and future social workers. COFCCA recognizes that the ability of social workers to defray portions of their educational expenses is related to maintaining a flow of qualified social workers into the pipeline to work in child welfare and other fields of practice.

What opportunities are there for social workers interested in being employed in child welfare agencies?

The opportunities for social workers in child welfare agencies are limitless. Most of the executive directors of our agencies are social workers - demonstrating a clear career ladder for those interested in climbing to the top.

Agencies are constantly searching for social workers to fill staffing positions at all levels and varieties of key positions.

The increasing mental health needs of the children and families who rely on child welfare services have added to the urgency of recruiting and retaining social workers. Moreover, because child welfare agencies provide the full scope of services to children and families, working at an agency is a tremendous learning experience that offers the satisfaction of seeing the most vulnerable children and families benefit from the help of social workers.

What about opportunities to obtain the LMSW and LCSW?

COFCCA continues to work to prepare social workers to obtain their LCSW. Our training consortium has provided five, four-hour mandated child abuse and neglect courses to all private, not-for-profit child welfare agencies and opened this same training to staff of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).

In addition, during 2005, our training consortium developed three “walk through” programs of two-hour duration to assist social workers in completing the forms necessary to submit their applications for the LMSW and the LCSW to the New York State Education Department, Office of the Professions. The sessions were free of charge and participants completed the required forms on-site. These programs were created in collaboration with Columbia University School of Social Work, the Day Care Council, and the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. That collaboration grew out of the NASW-NYC Licensing Implementation Task Force’s work on disseminating information about the law and the criteria for obtaining the licenses.

COFCCA plays a significant role in paving the way for incoming social workers to receive the clinical supervision necessary for them to obtain the LCSW as the clinical specialty license.

Join NASW