My neighbor, Donna, had a retirement party this weekend. After 30 years of service to Bay Area children as a Social Worker and Children's Services director she was sort of dialing back her schedule and semi retiring. But I learned this weekend, that Donna has really been a pioneer who has created a social networking program that is truly changing lives.
I've lived next to Donna for more than 10 years now and have always had nice conversations with her, but very rarely about her work. Early on, she made it clear that home was her respite from the day to day anguish she faced in helping children whose families had fallen apart due to drugs and crime. My wife and I respected that. At parties and in all those weekend conversations, we only scratched the cursory surface of her work. But this weekend, with some of her co-workers congratulating her, I learned just how modest Donna had been.
Last year, Donna created a pilot program, the first of its kind in California and by her co-worker's account, the United States, that uses the data and social technology of the internet to reunite children in Foster care with their maternal and paternal families. The pilot was so successful that a formal program was funded and started. "I was able to show the county that spending resources to connect names and locations in the case documentation with internet searches, in many cases gave us the opportunity to reunite these children with their extended families." Donna told me. "Putting these kids back into appropriate social and familial networks dramatically increases their long term ability to succeed."
The case records and internet searches combined with clinical counseling to smooth the process of reuniting these children with their latent social networks is a powerful solution that is repairing these children and offering them significantly improved chances for a productive future.
Just two examples offered an emotional insight into the program's impact. One involved a young 10 year old who had been in foster care for more than 5 years. A search of his case records led to the location and contact of his father, who had been presumed dead. The man, who at one time had been involved in drugs but long since had cleaned up and become a devoted husband and father, didn't even know he had a son. At the first meeting, the man brought many of his nuclear and extended family to meet the boy. At the end of the meeting, the father expressed his unconditional love for the boy and promised to bring him home. Within a few weeks, the young boy was living with his father and new family. Life improved for that 10 year old in ways that a foster system could never achieve.
A second example was of an older child who had been in foster care for most of his life and was about to "age out of the system", meaning that at age 18 he would be emancipated and leave the foster care system. Certainly there is preparation and programs to help this transition, but still, at 18 your social network is pretty much dissolved. Case and internet searching reunited this boy with his extended family in a southern state. Coincidentally, while in foster care, the boy had become a Master horseman and his extended family happened to be Master horsemen as well, running their own horse farm. Reunited with his family, he instantly had a repaired network and a bright lifelong future as a horse breeder.
Donna followed her hunch that case reviews, internet searches and the right counseling model could repair broken social networks. The resulting program is changing lives. It's a different view of social networks than we, in marketing are used to discussing, but the case study is extremely valid: Strategy, technology and insight combined to create meaningful conversation between people and institutions.
I've lived next to Donna for more than 10 years now and have always had nice conversations with her, but very rarely about her work. Early on, she made it clear that home was her respite from the day to day anguish she faced in helping children whose families had fallen apart due to drugs and crime. My wife and I respected that. At parties and in all those weekend conversations, we only scratched the cursory surface of her work. But this weekend, with some of her co-workers congratulating her, I learned just how modest Donna had been.
Last year, Donna created a pilot program, the first of its kind in California and by her co-worker's account, the United States, that uses the data and social technology of the internet to reunite children in Foster care with their maternal and paternal families. The pilot was so successful that a formal program was funded and started. "I was able to show the county that spending resources to connect names and locations in the case documentation with internet searches, in many cases gave us the opportunity to reunite these children with their extended families." Donna told me. "Putting these kids back into appropriate social and familial networks dramatically increases their long term ability to succeed."
The case records and internet searches combined with clinical counseling to smooth the process of reuniting these children with their latent social networks is a powerful solution that is repairing these children and offering them significantly improved chances for a productive future.
Just two examples offered an emotional insight into the program's impact. One involved a young 10 year old who had been in foster care for more than 5 years. A search of his case records led to the location and contact of his father, who had been presumed dead. The man, who at one time had been involved in drugs but long since had cleaned up and become a devoted husband and father, didn't even know he had a son. At the first meeting, the man brought many of his nuclear and extended family to meet the boy. At the end of the meeting, the father expressed his unconditional love for the boy and promised to bring him home. Within a few weeks, the young boy was living with his father and new family. Life improved for that 10 year old in ways that a foster system could never achieve.
A second example was of an older child who had been in foster care for most of his life and was about to "age out of the system", meaning that at age 18 he would be emancipated and leave the foster care system. Certainly there is preparation and programs to help this transition, but still, at 18 your social network is pretty much dissolved. Case and internet searching reunited this boy with his extended family in a southern state. Coincidentally, while in foster care, the boy had become a Master horseman and his extended family happened to be Master horsemen as well, running their own horse farm. Reunited with his family, he instantly had a repaired network and a bright lifelong future as a horse breeder.
Donna followed her hunch that case reviews, internet searches and the right counseling model could repair broken social networks. The resulting program is changing lives. It's a different view of social networks than we, in marketing are used to discussing, but the case study is extremely valid: Strategy, technology and insight combined to create meaningful conversation between people and institutions.
