A unique partnership will soon benefit children and families receiving child welfare services in Idaho.

The Idaho Child Welfare Partnership was announced Friday in Boise, which brings together the 

educational abilities of Boise State and Eastern Washington Universities, the expertise of 

Casey Family Programs, and the resources of the Department to help serve the children and 

families involved with child protection cases.

Friday’s announcement was held over the noon hour at the Grove Hotel in Boise.

The Department has been working with the universities and Casey to develop strategies to 

improve child welfare services on a variety of fronts. The focus of the partnership will be to:

• Develop an educated, highly trained, and experienced child welfare workforce; 
  

• Provide foster parents with training to help them work with traumatized children 

	and play a significant role with birth parents so families can be reunited; 

• Maximize funding by leveraging in-kind and monetary support from the formal 

	and informal networks for each individual partner organization and federal 

	matching programs; and 

• Track and measure the overall performance of the partnership to evaluate success. 
  

A Giant Step

“This partnership is a giant step towards ensuring that children and families receive the services

 they need,” says Ken Deibert, Administrator for the Division of Family and Community Services 

and Chairman of the Partnership Administrative Board. “This Partnership is designed to advance

 workforce development, implement practice innovations, promote public policy and system 

accountability, and increase resources to serve children in the child welfare system.”

“It is a win-win situation for the partners, but the real winner will be the children and families we serve.” 
Mardell Nelson, Partnership Director 

The partnership comes as Idaho’s child welfare resources are strained. In 2005, Idaho received 

8,592 child protection referrals alleging abuse or neglect. All counted, 3,197 children were placed 

in foster care in 2005. This compares to 2,260 children in 2002, a 41percent increase. Coupled 

with an 18 percent turnover rate of child welfare social workers in Family and Community Services, 

it is easy to see the challenges the child welfare system faces 

About Program Improvement

Mardell Nelson
Partnership Director

Mardell Nelson, the Partnership Director for the Department, says the relationship between the 

Casey, the universities, and the Department has been gradually building over the last 10 years. 

“The partnership is all about program improvement,” she says. “We will work with the universities

 to prepare a well-prepared workforce of social workers, and also look to them for help in training 

foster parents." 

Nelson says Casey is renowned for their commitment to develop innovative practices to improve 

child welfare services, and we will work with them on implementation. “It is a win-win situation for 

the partners, but the real winner will be the children and families we serve,” she says.