Strengths of my Organization

The Department of Child Services (DCS) has some great strengths as an organization. One of their strengths is that management supports lower-level employees with the decisions they make. Management allows DCS workers a huge amount of discretion when it comes to making decisions on their cases. Management will stand behind decisions made while helping to resolve potential problems if need be. Another strength is that DCS has employees who really care about helping families stay together. There are people who endure the long hours and little pay just because they enjoy helping families. In public service, that quality is very important to have. If someone is looking to get rich in public service they are in the wrong field. There is also continued training so that employees can stay up-to-date on organizational policies and best practices.

If I was in charge of a similar organization I would look into ways to keep high employee turnovers down. Employee turnovers cause a lot of strain on existing DCS employees. Because of the high turnovers, employees have to take on extremely higher than normal caseloads. Perhaps a streamlining of some tasks may help to relieve some of the pressures of high caseloads off of DCS employees. DCS employees also have to see children on their caseloads once a month which causes extra stress, especially when DCS employees have court reports to write and have to appear in court proceedings. I would have employees that do nothing but visit kids all month and share their findings with the regular assigned case manager. This will also relieve strain on case managers.