Benchmark - Organization AnalysisEssay

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Apr 3, 2024

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1 Benchmark - Organization Analysis Essay Gabrielle Saldana College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Grand Canyon University SWK-641 Dr. Nickolas Davis January 24, 2024

2 North Star Family Center is a foster and adoption agency that was established in 2009 in the heart of Fresno, California. North Star Family Center prides itself in serving the community of Fresno and surrounding cities and its mission is to, “ protect and strengthen children and families by addressing their diverse social needs through community-based programs and relationships.” (North Star Family Center, n.d., p.1 ). This is a non-profit agency that receives its funding from grants, donations, and government contracts. We are partnered with the department of social services, and we receive funding from the county to serve our families and provide income for the resource parents. Donations are a huge part of what keeps the agency thriving and we are partnered with many businesses in the community that support our efforts. North Star branched out in 2019 and created North Star Wellness Center which was designed to serve children, couples, and families through specialized therapy. The wellness center offers therapy groups in parenting, domestic violence prevention, anger management, child abuse prevention, and batterer’s intervention. The wellness center is an extension of the family center, but funding and contracts are separate. The wellness side receives funding from the probation department and the department of social services. I am interning as a social worker with the family center, and we are currently serving 30 foster families with children aged 1 to 17 years old. We meet every race, gender, religion, sexual identity, class, etc… and we work to address their diverse needs by building relationships and providing access to community-based programs. Youth in foster care experience significant trauma and “foster care youth have an increased risk to have experienced abuse and/or neglect compared to the general population” (Papovich, 2019, p.1 ).Knowing that foster children have a high risk of experiencing trauma, North Star Family Center partners with DragonFly and Pacific Clinics which are two therapeutic agencies in the community that provide one on one therapy. In

3 addition, we offer Intensive Services Foster Care which are one on one case management services for youth who need additional support behaviorally, academically, or socially. Wraparound services are provided which is a “strengths-based planning process that occurs in a team setting to engage with children, youth, and their families”. (Wraparound Services, n.d., p.1 ). We utilize the child’s support team which could include their social worker, case manager, therapist, foster family, and biological family. Once a month, this support team meets and discusses the strengths, improvements, interventions, and resources for the foster youth. The goal is to provide them with as much support and “wrap around” them to ensure that they have the same opportunity to thrive as their peers who are not in the system. The services we provide to our foster youth are crucial because “most children who enter foster care have been exposed to many conditions that have undermined their chances for healthy development” (Reibschleger, et al., 2015, p.5). Our services have shown significant outcomes and in the past 4 months, we have been able to reunify 5 children with their families, place 1 child in guardianship, and move 2 children to long term placement/adoption. Other treatment outcomes for North Star Family Center include stability of foster youth in their placements, increased adoption rates, increased educational outcomes for youth who have aged out of the program, successful reunification with biological families, reduced time for the length of children in foster care, and increased foster care placements. With every success comes challenges and the biggest resource that is lacking for our foster families is education and knowledge around suicide prevention. In the past month, four out of the twelve children on my caseload have experienced severe suicide ideation and have engaged in self-harming behaviors, one of which was placed on a 5150 hold and sent to a behavioral center for five days. Suicide is the leading cause of death for adolescents and “studies show that youth

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