Running head: organizational analysis

Organizational Analysis
Kelly E. Burg
Wayne State University

organizational analysis

Introduction
Child welfare is an on-going problem in todays society. (AFCARS, 2016.) In the U.S.
397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. 101,166 of
these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 32% of these children will wait over three
years in foster care before being adopted. Every child deserves to be in a permanent home
provided with food and clothing. At Spaulding for Children the agency helps to make sure that
every child is receiving the proper care needed. The agency also looks out for the best interest in
the child with that be adoption or reunification with their birth parent. Spaulding for Children
agency is located in Southfield, Michigan.
Organization and Services
Spaulding for Children is a private, non-profit agency. Spaulding for Children is a childwelfare agency that assists with foster care and adoption. The interns at this agency can either
work on the foster care and adoption side of the agency or they can work on the licensing side of
the agency. The interns that work on the foster care and adoption side of the agency work closely
with both birth parents and foster care parents. The Spaulding for Children interns can assist any
worker with documents that need to be completed, watching the parenting time visits, attending
court hearings, helping with an intake process, and making phone calls to any member that may
be involved in the case.
Missions and Goals
According to the website, The Spaulding for Childrens mission is, In partnership with
families, communities, organizations, states and the nation, Spaulding for Childrens mission is
to assure that all children grow up in safe, permanent families and have the help they need to be
successful in life. The goal of Spaulding for Children agency is to find permeant families and

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homes for the children in need. The other goal is reunification with the birth parent if possible.
These goals were determined when the agency was first established in the year 1968. The main
focus at that time was to find placement for children with developmental disabilities.
Spaulding for Children does a great job with achieving their goals. The agency is sure to
help assist birth parents with trying to be reunified with their children. The agency tries to
reunify the children with their birth parents by referring them to certain services that can make
them face the challenges they may be having. The services can be parenting classes, drug/alcohol
abuse classes, mental health counseling, and individual and family therapy. There is no goal
displacement within the agency. Within the agency, Spaulding for Children offers services to
parents and children in the community. The organization functions as a whole and is able to
follow its mission and deliver services to its target populations by making treatment plans for the
clients to follow. If the clients successful complete the treatment plan, he or she is more likely to
be able to reunify with their children.
Organizational Structure and Staffing
The staffing structure of Spaulding for Children influences the power and control in the
agency. There is a board of directors. The first on the board of directions is the President/CEO of
the agency. The CEO/President makes all the choices that happen within the agency.
At Spaulding for Children, the CEO/President is filled by an African American women.
Within the agency, the positions are mostly filled by women. There are three men that work at
the agency. Out of the three men, two of them are case workers. The other man controls the
technology throughout the whole agency. There is a 50/50 split between white women and
African American women at the agency. The roles that the women fill are the case workers,

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supervisors, and receptionists. There isnt anyone at the agency who has an obvious disability.
There are no staff members in the agency that face any special challenges or issues.
The agency is located in Southfield, Michigan. Therefore, majority of the clients are
African American. Some of the case workers face issues with clients due to their ethnicity. There
are some clients at the agency who refuse to work with a white social worker if they are African
American. Some of the children within the agency also do not feel comfortable being placed with
a family who is not their ethnicity. There was recently an issue at the agency where an African
American boy didnt feel comfortable being placed with a white family. There were some
children at his school that would make comments about him being dropped off by the white
family. The young African American boy started to have his foster parents drop him off down the
street from the school.
At Spaulding for Children the client population is made up of about 80% African
American families and 20% white families. There are very few issues with the case workers and
clients. The agency and the workers are very well trained professionals. They are very aware of
the agencies cultural competence. They must provide each client in a professional way. This
means the workers must follow certain policies and behaviors to help serve clients. Spaulding for
Children has very strict polices that workers and clients need to follow. The polices that need to
be followed are case records, confidentiality, cyber security policy, emergency telephone service,
ethical practices, rights, and responsibilities, incident reports, non-discrimination, safety on and
off site, service accessibility, students, and TB tests.
Each client has the right to have their information kept privately, this means that the case
records must be locked and kept in a secure place. All case records should be kept confidential. If
any information is released for any reason, the client must sight a release of information

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document. The agency must have a certain data base to secure the technology of the agency. The
agency must provide a 24 hour telephone service for the clients. This telephone service is
provided to foster parents, foster children, guardians, birth parents, adoptive parents, and
relatives. If there is any question or emergency they have the right to call the phone and the
social worker that is on call, must respond within 30 minutes of the phone call received.
Spaulding for Children works to eliminate internal and external barriers to achieve ethical
practice in the organization. Spaulding for Children can also not discriminate by reason of race,
ethnicity color, religion, national origin, sex, age, height, weight, marital status, disability, sexual
orientation, or any other reason prohibited by law. When working with clients both in and outside
of the office, the social workers must assure the safety of their client. The agency must make
services available to their clients if needed.
The agency itself is broken up into foster care/adoption and licensing. The agency does a
great job with communication among both sides of the agency. All of the supervisors keep
everyone up to date about things that are going on with both sections of the agency. For example,
referring back to the journal written by the intern, once a month the Vice President of the agency
holds a joint meeting, with Foster Care, Adoption, Wendys Wonderful Kids, and the Licensing
Department. At this meeting, each supervisor of the department will explain to everyone in the
meeting what is going on in each department and new changes that has happened within the
month.
The supervisors of each department will meet with their case workers and interns in each
department at least once every two weeks for supervision. At the supervision meetings, every
case is discussed that the worker has. The supervisor and worker go over the court hearings,
documents that need to be completed, and any other important information that is necessary to

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the case. Spaulding for Children does a fantastic job with their management and their workers.
There is a very open communication line with all.
Internal and External Environment
Spaulding for Children receive their clients through the DHS data base. DHS will
alternate the different agencies around the county for every case that comes through CPS. The
agency will receive a phone call from DHS to see if they are available to take the case. The
agency bases their ability to take the case based on the amount of beds that are available within
the agency. The agency bases the amount of beds by seeing how many beds foster parents have
open in their home. The foster parents must be licensed through Spaulding for Children.
The agencys relationship with other organizations in the environment seem to be very
strong. Spaulding for Children works closely with Orchards Family Services that is also located
in Southfield, Michigan. There are some cases at the agency where all of the siblings arent
placed together at the same agency due to the limitation of the beds that were available at the
time the children came into care.
The social workers at both agencies are able to work close with one another by keeping
an open communication to update each other about different information that they may need to
know about the case or about the siblings. Spaulding for Children also works close with
Northeast Guidance Center. Northeast Guidance Center provides mental health services to both
children and the parents. At Northeast Guidance Center, they offer both individual and family
therapy. Spaulding for Children refers many of their clients to receive services from this
organization. Being able to work closely with Orchards Family Services and the Northeast
Guidance Center provides aid to Spaulding for Children. It allows the social workers to receive

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the information they may need and it also provides mental health assistance to both children and
their parents.
Spaulding for Children has strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the
agency. The strengths of the agency are the ability to provide clients with proper resources when
needed, providing services to clients in need, working as a team within the agency, and good
communication skills with clients. The weaknesses of the agency are funding (due to non-profit),
limited amount of foster parents, and over loads of cases due to limited social workers at the
agency. If the agency had more foster parents, there could be more opportunity for the agency.
Having more foster parents can allow the agency to have more beds. By having more
beds in the agency can help with receiving more funding since Spaulding for Children is nonprofit. The changing technology has provided a threat within the agency. Misacwis is used
throughout every foster care and adoption agency in the area. Although DHS believes that this
technology has done well for the agencies in Michigan, it hasnt. There has been many glitches
that needed to be fixed on the website.
Some of the workers have a difficult time trying to navigate through the website. DHS
adds different boxes that need to be filled out pertaining to important information that needs to
be filled out without notifying the agencies. This can leave the supervisor and the social workers
very confused.
Spaulding for children receives their funding of the agency a couple different ways.
(Maeyer,S., Vanderfaeillie,J., Vanschoonlandt,F., Robberechts,M., Van Holen,F. 2014.)
Although foster parents are considered volunteers, they receive a daily expense allowance,
independent on the childs need and foster families income. Every child in the agency can either
be state or county funded. Depending on what standards they meet, varies on the amount of

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money the agency receives. If the child is state funded, the agency receives more money versus if
they were county funded. Each child is based on a daily rate. This daily rate helps decided how
much the foster parent and the agency will receive per child per day. Majority of the children in
the agency are considered county funded. The agency also receives only one federal grant.
This federal grant helps support both the foster care and adoption programs. Last year the agency
received three different federal funds. Since those funds stopped, the agency had to lay off
workers due to limitations of funding.
There are also certain grants that the agency receives. These grants help fund the different
recruitments for adoption. For example, the Wendys grant helps provide extra money to help
support the recruitments. The grant will also help pay for a short clip of some children that have
been adopted through Spaulding. This short clip will give honest answers about their time spent
at Spaulding and different experiences they faced while being placed at the agency.
Theoretical Construct of Organization
The organizational theory that best describes Spaulding for Children is the Organizational
Culture by Schein, Cross, Weick, and Morgan. Netting, E., Keettner, P., McMurtry, S., Thomas,
L. (2012) The key concepts that this theory focuses on are values, beliefs, diversity, sense
making, and metaphor. Spaulding for Children is a diverse foster care agency. Both clients and
social workers come from a diverse ethnic background.
(Williams, N., Glisson, C., 2014) Organizational culture is important because of its
influence on how employees prioritize and execute job tasks, how they make sense of events in
their work setting, and how they experienced the psychological impact of the work environment
on their personal well-being.

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This theory can help people understand the agency from an outside perspective because it
shows the uniqueness of the agency. These theory can show that there are values and beliefs
within the agency. There are certain procedures that need to be followed to provide their clients
with the best service that is possible. (Glisson,C., James, L.R. 2012) In child welfare agencies
cultural norms are associated with how caseworkers view and relate to their clients, their level of
availability and responsiveness to clients, the types of relationships they are able to form with
children and families, and the specific practice models they employ to achieve child safety,
permanency, and well-being.
Recommendation
Based on the information received about the SWOT analysis, interviews with staff,
personal observations, and other sources about the major strengths and weaknesses of the agency
there are definitely different recommendations that should be made for Spaulding for Children.
The first recommendation that needs to be made is hiring more social workers/case workers. By
hiring more workers, this can help lower the amount of cases that a social worker has. At
Spaulding for Children, there are some social workers who are carrying sixteen children on their
case load. Having this many cases on a case load can make a case worker become easily stressed
out. This can then limit the amount of resources a case worker can give to their client due the
inability of being able to spend time and keep close contact with a client.
The second recommendation for Spaulding for Children is trying to advertise more about
becoming a foster parent. By providing more advertising can help spread the importance of
children needing foster homes to help eliminate the amount of children that have to go to shelter
or residential due to the limitation of beds within the agency.

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The agency should also advertise more about adoption and how to become an adoptive
parent. There are many adoption recruitments that happen through the agency out in the public,
but are not publicly announced. Wendys is a large sponsor with the Adoption program. By
advertising through more Wendys locations about becoming a foster parent and adoption
recruitments can help give more children that are in need a home and a loving family.
Both of these recommendations considering the internal and external environment are
realistic. The only internal issue with the recommendation of hiring more social workers may be
due to funding. Relating back to the SWOT analysis and a conversation with the supervisor at
Spaulding for Children, last year there were more social workers that worked at the agency
because Spaulding for Children had more federal grants. These federal grants ended this past
September. The agency was unable to receive them again. Therefore the agency had to cut some
of the workers. These federal grants were given to the agency for the past five years.
The only internal issue with trying to advertise Spaulding for Children would also be lack
of income. There are different fundraisers that the agency could try to do to be able to raise some
money to help receive the funds to be able to spread the word within the community. By
advertising, this could lead to more foster parents willing to provide a home to these children in
need. By having more foster parents and children, the agency could be able to receive the other
federal grants that they once were given.
An external issue that may occur with hiring more social workers and not being able to
have the funds to advertise can relate back to the economy. Although the economy has been
improving since the finical crisis, there still may be several issues related to finical problems
because the agency is located in Southfield. Detroit and Inkster are very close to Southfield and
the agency, these are where majority of the agencies cases come from. Since the children are

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mainly considered a county ward, the economy can be a leading factor as to why the agency
isnt receiving the highest funds per child and why they arent considered a state ward.
(Smissen, S., Freese, C.2013) Transformational change can have a big impact on the
structure and the cultural of an organization. A transformational and accommodation change in
the agency may be considered an organizational resistance that may prevent change happening.
(Smissen,S., Freese,C. 2013) Accommodation is connected to organizational changes such as
isolated changes in performance criteria, benefit packages, or working hours, while
transformational relates to systemic changes such as downsizing process restructuring or
introduction of new HR policies. The agency can relate to accommodation because the social
workers may have to put in more hours at the agency due to the lower number of social workers.
The agency may face transformational change because of the downsizing of the agency
due to lack of funding. There isnt much that can happen when an agency is trying to downsize
the agency. The funding is not as high as it once use to be. The agency could try to get more
state ward, cases to attempt to make the funding of the agency increase instead of decrease
during this fiscal year. Accommodation and transformation are two major forms of organizational
resistance that can prevent change from happening at an agency or any business. There is always
room for growth and change within an agency and business.
Conclusion
Spaulding for Children allows and provides for clients every day. They support their
mission and help serve people in the community that need their help. In partnership with
families, communities, organizations, states and the nation, Spaulding for Childrens mission is
to assure that all children grow up in safe, permanent families and have the help they need to be
successful in life. Spaulding for Children has faced many issues with finical problems. Their

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lack of funding has led to having the social workers take on heavy caseloads. There are many
strengths and weaknesses that the agency continues to follow and try to fix each and every day.
Spaulding for Children continues to find homes for children everyday!

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References
AFCARS. (2016). Facts and Statistics. Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Retrieved
from www.ccainstitute.org.
Glisson,C., James, L.R. (2002). The cross-level effects of organizational culture and climate on
the access to mental health care in child welfare and juvenile justice. Journal of
Organizational
Behavior, 23, p. 767-794.
Maeyer,S., Vanderfaeillie,J., Vanschoonlandt,F., Robberechts,M., Van Holen,F.( 2014).
Motivation for Foster Care. Elserier. P.143-149. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/science/article/pii/S019074091300344
7.
Netting, E., Keettner, P., McMurtry, S., Thomas, L. (2012). Social Work Macro Practice: United
States: Pearson Publishing.
Smissen,S., Freese,C. (2013). Organizational change and the psychological contract: How
change influences the perceived fulfillment of obligations. Journal of Organizational
Change Management, 26.6, P.1071-1090. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/docview/1439462712/fulltext/4B78B6B5
C6DC4225PQ/1?accountid=14925.
Spaulding for Children. (2016). About Us. Retrieved from www.spaulding.org.
Williams,N., Glisson, C. (2014). Testing a theory of organizational culture, climate, and youth
outcomes in child welfare systems: A United States National Study. Elsevier, 38, p. 757767.

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