DHS Oregon Department of Human Services Child Welfare

Child Welfare Mission and Values

The mission of the Department of Human Services is assisting people to become independent, healthy and safe.

The mission of Children, Adults, and Families is to improve family capacity to be self-sustaining while creating a safe and permanent living environment for children.

Values-
Every child in Oregon has the right to grow up in a safe, permanent and nurturing family home. Oregon’s child welfare practice focuses on each child’s individualized needs for safety, permanency and well-being. The following core values are the foundation for policies, procedures and practices:

-Child safety is the fundamental right of every child in our state and the paramount concern of the child welfare system.

-Identifying and understanding children’s individual needs are the first steps toward meeting those needs.

-Identifying and reinforcing parental strengths and capacities to keep their children safe are the first steps in mobilizing them to meet children’s needs.

-Active participation of families in service planning for and decision-making about their children is a powerful catalyst for mobilization of strengths to respond to children’s identified needs.

-Whenever safety concerns dictate that children must live apart from their families, reunification is most often the goal of initial service planning.

-Children’s needs for safety and permanency are urgent, requiring that the child welfare system activate and complete with corresponding urgency child-specific plans to meet those needs.

-When Child Welfare and families work collaboratively to develop activities and services to preserve and enhance their children’s healthy connections with them yield improved outcomes for both children and families.

-Employing diverse services and staff that are responsive to the unique cultural composition and needs of each child and family is a fundamental responsibility of the child welfare system.

-By preserving healthy connections with their families and communities promotes children’s current and future well-being.

-Children’s needs are individualized but fall into three primary categories: safety, permanency and well-being.