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Blue Spiral Services

When your organization connects with Blue Spiral Consulting for child welfare implementation, training or consulting services, our first step is a ‘discovery conversation’ with senior leadership to determine your current needs and desired outcomes. We work collaboratively from the start, modeling the partnership and inclusion that we teach. Collectively, we’ll decide which of our services we offer will meet your needs. We attract organizations where senior leadership is committed to creating learning organizations in which all voices are heard. Our customers are as passionate as we are about providing best practice to families as active participants in the child or adult protection process, not just as recipients of services.
“I’ve been in the child welfare business for 25 years, and this series is by far the best and most comprehensive training I’ve attended.”
— Wilson County, NC child welfare supervisor

Child Welfare Model Implementation: Whole System Change

At Blue Spiral Consulting, we focus on whole system change. We aim to equip child protection professionals and family service organizations to implement lasting changes that deliver better outcomes for vulnerable children or aging adults and their families. We also support the development of learning cultures with internal expertise, practice leadership and trainer development that supports sustainability.

In 20 years of training half a dozen models, we have never found one that is as robust, structured, and supportive for everyone involved as Signs of Safety..
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Signs of Safety offers a whole-system approach to change; combining organizational leadership, practice, academic and research experience to implementation strategies that:
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  • Focus on alignment of practice, policy, systems and leadership 
  • Manage the complexity of child protection practice and organization 
  • Improve the quality of help given to children, young people and their families
  • Places the responsibility for the child’s safety and healing with the parents, children and everyone naturally connected to the family
  • Based on practitioner-tested tools for family engagement, assessment and safety planning 
  • The Signs of Safety model is continuously evolving based on what works for practitioners doing the work with families.
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Organizational Alignment
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At Blue Spiral Consulting, we believe that senior leadership and organizational alignment with best practice makes the difference between an organization that exemplifies inspired leadership, vision and mission driven work, values-focused culture and a workplace where professionals can share their gifts and want to stay. 
 
All the training in the world for frontline practitioners, nor ongoing support for supervisors won’t make a difference if senior leadership and the organizational structures and systems that impact their daily functioning are not aligned to support and drive best practice with families.
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We approach organizational alignment
from these directions: 
  1. Strategic Thinking and Planning
  2. Smart Policy and Think Tanks 
  3. Senior Leadership Coaching
  4. Middle Management Alignment and Coaching
  5. Organizational Alignment Assessment and Coaching
  6. Meaningful Measures in Child Welfare Practice
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“Building a visionary company requires 1% vision and 99% alignment. When you have superb alignment, a visitor could drop in from outer space and infer your vision by the operations and activities of the company without ever reading it on paper or meeting a single senior executive.”
 
— Jim Collins and Jerry Porras,
     Harvard Business Review

Building Staff Development

& Facilitation Skills

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Blue Spiral Consulting has facilitated local, regional and statewide meetings, teams, Think Tanks and specially cultivated talent development with child welfare trainers across the country. We offer a suite of workshops and seminars both in person and virtually that build basic to intermediate facilitation skills, advanced facilitation and training skills, instructional design and curricula development. We specialize in working with child welfare training teams either through university schools of social work, state-based child welfare academies or individual child welfare organizations with in-house trainers.
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Our suite of offerings includes in-person
and virtual learning: 
  1. Basic Facilitation Skills   
  2. Technology of Participation Facilitation Methods  
  3. Child and Family Teaming  
  4. Child and Family Team Facilitation 
  5. Trainer Development Academy
  6. Curricula Development Methods 
 
“I thought about how in my work with Blue Spiral, they are always demonstrating taking it back to the people who are doing the hard work and making sure their voice is heard- the family, the social worker, supervisors.  So when I was facilitating a coaching group for parents, I noticed how one Mom who’d been involved with CPS had made some significant progress; how far she’d come. So I asked her if she’d be willing to share her story. She came back to the group and shared her progress to become the parent she wants to be. She also brought her 9 year old daughter, who spoke about how different her relationship is with her mom now. I don’t think I would have thought to do that on my own. I heard Courtney and Lindley’s voice encouraging me, in the back of my mind, and now I’m working on getting this mom to co-facilitate the parent coaching group with me.” 
 
— Wisconsin Professional Development
     Services Trainer 
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Keynote and Conference Presentations
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Courtney Smith and Lindley Myers have a 20 year history as presenters at child welfare conferences at the state and national level including: 
 
        
Courtney has been a keynote speaker at the: 
  • Wisconsin Child Welfare Conference 
  • North Dakota Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Conference 
  • Phoenix Mental Health Alliance Conference 
  • National Runaway and Homeless Youth Conference 
  • North Carolina Foster and Adoptive Parents Conference 
  • Mountain Area Health Education Center     Teaching Family Association Conference     
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