Action Plan - Introduction
High achieving organizations find that, to remain vibrant, they have to periodically reinvent themselves. This is not to suggest that these organizations tear away from their roots and discard their essential character. Rarely is such a drastic departure warranted or wise. Instead, successful organizations continually reflect on their history of achievement and build on the lessons they have learned along the way.
In 2001, as the Los Angeles Children's Planning Council (CPC) completed its first decade, we took time to celebrate its accomplishments, acknowledge and learn from its disappointments and consider how, if at all, it should refocus its efforts in the second decade. The CPC is at a critical time in its continued development: it has recently replaced its founding Executive Director, it is about to celebrate a ten year anniversary, new leadership is coming to the fore as some long standing participants have reduced their involvement, the Service Planning Area (SPA) Councils which were created as a part of the CPC are showing growing pains, and many of the ideas that characterized the vision of the CPC - a focus on children; paying attention to outcomes; expanded use of data; service integration; inclusive processes that find room for community voices - have been accepted and become a part of a changed environment.
The Los Angeles CPC is, to our knowledge, the strongest and most influential cross-system vehicle advocating for reform of children's service systems in a major US metropolitan area. With relatively little resources, the presence of the CPC has quietly changed the discussion in Los Angeles County about children. As one key informant for this report noted, "The contribution of CPC has been to change what is considered common sense in county government." Common sense, ten years after the creation of the CPC, is now about service integration, decentralization, data driven planning, a focus on outcomes and inclusive decision-making. While a great deal more needs to be done to implement these ideas into daily practice, most agree that the concepts and ideas that have characterized the CPC are now deeply rooted in Los Angeles County.
The CPC has been largely responsible for a series of important changes in the County environment, helping to move the County:
- From independent County agencies working in isolation to agencies working closely together.
- From isolation from non-County agencies to multi-faceted, deep collaborations.
- From a focus on funder imposed processes to one on outcomes for children.
- From the collection and use of data to meet program requirements/reporting to using data to help make programs more effective
- From thinking and acting at a countywide level, to increased attention to services and interventions that reflect unique geographic circumstances.
Yet, some worry that the CPC may become a "victim of its own successes." The environment of ten years ago has changed dramatically, in no small measure as a result of CPC efforts, and the precise role of the CPC in the next ten years is not entirely clear. What does the CPC do, now that the ideas it has championed have won the day?
The Cornerstone Consulting Group was asked by the Los Angeles County Children's Planning Council to develop a document that would assist the CPC in charting its future direction. After ten years, it is possible to see both the important accomplishments of the past and difficult challenges that lie ahead. The CPC has built a reputation as an independent, objective body focused on planning for children's services in Los Angeles County, and CPC members are committed to making the next ten years as productive and as useful as the first. Cornerstone is assisting the Council in forging this vision by helping to focus CPC member's attention on strategic choices, challenges ahead, and strategies to overcome them. Our hope is that this report will be helpful to the CPC in framing the discussions and decisions that lie ahead.
Action Plan
Since the beginning the Children's Planning Council has worked through a broadly inclusive process, building agreement on incremental steps toward a shared vision. The first steps-developing the vision, principles for change, and a geographic framework for planning-demonstrated the possibilities of this kind of participatory planning. Defining the elements of a shared plan for action is, however, much more challenging. It requires difficult choices among competing priorities, raises the possibility of directing existing resources, and relies on calibration at multiple levels among thousands of concerned individuals and organizations.
The primary elements of the action plan that have been developed thus far are:
- Agreement on long-term outcomes and a regular method of tracking progress.
- A definition of the strategic directions that will lead to improvements in these outcomes.
- Agreement on a set of high-priority practical actions that county government can take to improve outcomes for families and children in the short term.
- The implementation of a regional infrastructure of service planning area councils.
The next sections summarize these four major elements of the Children's Planning Council action plans.
Outcome Measurement for Family and Children's Services: Data Driven Planning
To meet its overall goal of improving results for Los Angeles County children, youth, and families, the Children's Planning Council has initiated a process to measure the well-being of children in the County. In addition to the rich anecdotal experience of child-serving professionals, we need objective, measurable indicators that tell us how we are doing.
One of the Council's first acts was to form its Data Analysis and Technical Assistance (DATA) Committee. This group of data experts consists of representatives from the departments of Public Social Services, Children and Family Services, Probation, Health Services, Mental health, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District, United Way, Info Line (a county wide information and referral service), the Children and Adult Services Information Systems Advisory Board (CASISAB), the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children, university-based researchers, and others.
The Committee's first task was to identify outcome areas and statistical measures that could be tracked from year to year. A position statement outlining six outcome areas and a set of principals for measuring outcomes for children was approved by the Board of Supervisors in January of 1993. The DATA Committee then developed the format and content of a countywide Children's Score Card to:
- Increase public awareness of the conditions of children and their families, set expectations for improvement over time, and track changing conditions.
- Guide program planning and allocation of resources for public and private agencies that provide services to families and children by highlighting both successes and areas of greatest need.
- Set shared goals for improvement and standards by which to judge the adequacy of shared efforts to improve the conditions of children.
The first Children's Score Card was issued jointly by the Children's Planning Council and United way in United Way's 1994 State of the County report. The most recent Children's Score Card, again issued jointly in United Way's 1996 State of the County report. It is accompanied by a new pilot effort, the Community Conditions for Children's Score Card, which represents a first attempt to develop an understanding of how community context affects children and families. These score cards embody the Council's commitment to developing common goals and shared responsibility for achieving desired outcomes; such common understanding can help cut across the many organizational and community boundaries that currently separate efforts on behalf of children and families.
Los Angeles County Children's Outcome Areas
Approved, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: January 26, 1993
Outcome 1: Good Health
Outcome 2: Economic Well-Being
Outcome 3: Safety and Survival
Outcome 4: Emotional and Social Support/Adult Support for Children
Outcome 5: Achievement and Readiness to participate in the Workforce
Strategic Directions for Change
Approved,Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: December 10, 1996
All of the Children's Planning Council's efforts have been designed to focus energy and resources-to the fullest extent possible-on improving the future of every child and youth in the County.
The reality, however, is that too many children have little hope of our Vision's "safe, healthy, and nurturing" childhood; some despair of even reaching adulthood at all. For reasons both too familiar to explain and too overwhelming to comprehend-including poverty, racism, drugs, and hopelessness- the systems that were designed in a bygone era to provide a 'safety net' for the few have become primary resources for very large numbers of children and families.
In fact, the Children's Data Match report found that by 1993, half the County's children and more than half of its families with children required services-particularly income support and basic health care-from county government. Such high need has outstripped government's capacity to respond effectively. It is clear that traditional assumptions about how best to support the development of our children need to change. We must develop a new set of beliefs, directions, and strategies if we are ever to realize out vision.
Despite the success of various initiatives and programs, the County as a whole has not yet been able to make the leap from how systems work now, within the customary boundaries, to a collective effort as complex and multifaceted as that envisioned by the Children's Planning Council is a long-term process, one that will require determination, perseverance, and political will. It will also require a substantial transition period.
During this transition, Los Angeles will face a number of difficult challenges: developing broad community understanding and desire for involvement, challenging Federal and state guidelines to free dollars for prevention and early intervention, decentralizing public and private services delivery, building community-based supports for families and children, persuading charitable and philanthropic organizations to invest in change, and coordinating numerous reform efforts across multiple jurisdictions.
The Children's Planning Council has developed a shared understanding of the changes that must occur. Using that understanding, the Council issued this call to action, building on the following key directions and strategies that can create the infrastructure for change.
Directions
1. Joint efforts among communities, government, and the private sector must accept shared responsibility and accountability for improving outcomes for children, families, and communities. Demonstrating success with today's resources can help build the case for increased investment in the future. Together, we must commit ourselves to discovering what works, rather than allocating blame and shifting responsibility from one system to another. Together, we must encourage experimentation to develop plausible, testable, and "do-able" theories of change, and to share information on both successes and failures. Together, we can make a much more compelling argument for the additional resources needed to invest in our children and our future than can any one agency on its own-by using, combing, and leveraging resources so everyone can benefit.
2. Communities must determine their own priorities and then work with both government and the private sector to achieve the desired goals. Direction must come from community members closest to children and families- and those most invested in their welfare-rather than from government and philanthropic funders, who tend to be farthest away from the daily lives of children and families throughout the many different communities in Los Angeles. The understanding and know-how of communities, joined with policy role and the resources of government and the private sector, will make it possible to move toward the infrastructure the Council envisions.
3. Government and private sector services must be further decentralized so that they can support community-based decision-making and allow for real and practical partnerships with community groups. Effective partnerships between government and community groups have sprung up throughout the County, but we still have a long way to go before such partnerships are the rule rather than the exception. The size and complexity of Los Angeles County, as well as dramatic changes at the Federal and state levels, require that local government/municipalities be more responsive and communities more involved in decision-making around children and families.
4. We must prioritize and reinvest monies now being spent on high-end services to fund prevention. Since 1988, the cost of non-prevention services has increased over 30 percent. To resolve a series of fiscal crises, we have repeatedly cut back on the very activities- child care, youth leadership development, primary health care, early counseling, parent education, and after-school activites- that are necessary to help families keep their children off the streets, out of trouble, healthy, and productive. It is important to build "prevention" into all levels of the system to assure that children and youth who get into trouble receive the help they need to work their way back out again. As we now know, the long-term cost of failing to prevent the escalation of trouble is much too high. Systems do not turn around overnight, however, and bridge money must be identified to invest in prevention until this investment becomes self-financing.
Strategies
To make progress on key outcomes throughout a transition period, the Children's Planning Council recommends that we develop a process of focused Countywide experimentation. We know how children are doing currently in each of the five key outcome areas, both Countywide and in each of the eight board-adopted Service Planning Area Councils and the American Indian Children's Council.
1. Community/Neighborhood
Wonderful, difficult, and-in some cases-astonishing work is happening in communities. Pubic and private service providers, funder, community leaders, and residents have begun the processes of community-based planning-setting goals, developing priories, collecting data, and agreeing on desired outcomes-and are moving to explore both the responsibilities and the potential impact of community-based decision-making and resource allocation. This work must be supported, continued, and expanded.
2. Service Planning Area/Region
Discussions should continue about the practical and effective ways to develop regional-level capacities to determine priorities, to define linkages between local planners and Countywide policy-makers, to identify and remove policy and systemic barriers to progress, and to assist in leveraging public/private resources.
3. Countywide
During 1997, the Children's Planning Council should develop a set of recommendations that will improve results for children in each of the five outcome areas. Considerations should include:
- What initiatives are already underway?
- What and where are the existing resources?
- Who are he key players and potential partners who should participate?
- How do we educate and mobilize participants toward successful initiatives?
- What data is available or necessary to track change systematically?
- How do we address these recommendations within the context of welfare and devolution?
Action Plan: Measuring Results
- Outcomes and indicators should be practical, results-oriented, clearly important to the well-being of children, and stated in terms that are understandable to the public. They should reflect the well-being of the whole child, rather than focusing on the parts served by specific services systems.
- The overall outcomes sought should be expressed as positive expressions of child well-being, rather than as the absence of negative conditions (good health rather than decreased illness). However, many of the indicators that measure those outcomes will be phrased in the negatives because that is how the data are currently collected.
- Since no one indicator captures the full dimensions of the outcomes sought, each outcome should be measures by a set of indicators chosen from the most valid and reliable data available.
- Indicators should be selected to reflect the overall state of our children, not the state of the service delivery system, although implications for the improvement of the current system of services should be derived from the regular collection and analysis of service delivery data. Indicators should, where possible, reflect the outcomes of services for families and children, and not just the existence of services.
- Initial efforts should focus on a strategic set of outcomes and indicators that reflect concerns shared by the entire community, including policymakers, service providers, and families. Efforts should begin with a limited number of outcomes and indicators that focus on child well-being, with the understanding that, in subsequent years, indicators that reflect the well-being of families and communities may also be added.
- The process of developing appropriate and practical outcome measures that accurately reflect the state of the county's children will be an evolutionary one, from which there is much to learn. Perhaps one of the most important steps is the clarification of the cultural and value foundations that underlie the process; the selection of outcomes and indicators that reflect goals shared by all groups is essential if the product is to be a meaningful picture of the state of the county's children.
