Child Welfare in California Webinar

Key Takeaways from our Webinar ‘A Decade of Reform: Child Welfare in California’

Blog

Published: March 12, 2025

Authors:

I recently had the pleasure of moderating a Sellers Dorsey webinar that examined California’s progress in child welfare reform over the past decade. Speakers included Will Lightbourne, a longtime leader in social services, and Katie Renner Olse, Sellers Dorsey’s Senior Director of Child and Family Well-Being. Together, we reflected on how far the child welfare system has come since the 1970s, when child welfare often operated under the belief that families couldn’t be trusted to care for their own children.

Shifting Priorities in Child Welfare

Over the years, the child welfare system has evolved from focusing solely on child safety to addressing broader emotional and behavioral health needs, including trauma recovery. A significant shift came in 2014 when California began prioritizing placing foster children with stable families over institutional settings. Other reforms included equal financial support for kinship caregivers and foster families and aligning foster care rates with a child’s specific needs.

Building a Full System of Care

Today, child and family well-being is supported by a coordinated system that includes:

Primary prevention
In-home family preservation
Foster care and kinship care
Post-system support

This system requires collaboration among healthcare providers, educators, law enforcement, and child welfare agencies at the federal, state, and local levels — adding complexity but also improving outcomes.

Challenges and External Pressures

Key challenges facing the child welfare system include:

Social determinants of health
Workforce shortages and high staff turnover
Increased strain from natural disasters, such as wildfires and hurricanes, which can disrupt services and displace families

Looking Ahead

Several developments hold promise for improving child welfare outcomes:

Technology: Artificial intelligence could help reduce administrative burdens, allowing staff to focus more on supporting children and families.
Legislation: The Supporting America’s Children and Families Act will provide new funding and support for workforce recruitment and family preservation efforts.
Lived Experience: More professionals with firsthand experience in the child welfare system are joining the workforce, strengthening service delivery.

Sellers Dorsey remains committed to supporting these efforts through strategic guidance, policy expertise, and stakeholder collaboration. The road ahead will require perseverance, adaptability, and accountability — but the goal remains clear: improving the lives of children and families.

Or connect with our team to learn more!

Katie Renner Olse

Katie Renner Olse’s impactful leadership in child and family well-being for both the public and private sector has left an indelible mark on communities across the country. Before joining Sellers Dorsey, Katie served as the CEO of the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services (TACFS) where she supported the work of community organizations serving children and families in the child welfare system. There, she spearheaded critical initiatives and championed system reform efforts including oversight of the nation’s largest state network of child, youth, and family-serving provider organizations. Under her leadership, she launched the Texas Center of Child and Family Studies (TCCFS), which has become a model for supporting private child and youth-serving providers in other states and has grown to support hundreds of providers within the mental health, juvenile justice, and child welfare arena.

Katie also served as the President of the National Organization of State Associations for Children (NOSAC) where she worked with top leaders in state child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health associations. Prior to her experience at NOSAC, Katie served as Deputy Commissioner for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), a state-based agency with over 12,000 employees responsible for protecting Texas children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. DFPS operates five major programs including Child and Adult Protective Services, Child Protective Investigations, Prevention and Early Intervention, and Statewide Intake.

Additionally, Katie was the Chief of Staff for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC), an agency within the Texas Health and Human Services System that has hundreds of programs helping more than 7.5 million Texans each month live healthier lives. THHSC provides a wide range of services to Texans including assistance with aging, finances, food, mental health, substance use, and more. Before her tenure at THHSC, Katie was the Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Commissioner for DFPS, and the former Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services.

Current Responsibility

Katie serves as Senior Director within the Firm’s National Consulting Practice. Katie utilizes her leadership experience across the full continuum of child and family well-being to offer innovative solutions to clients and increase impact on children and families nationwide. Her expertise resides at the intersection of child welfare and healthcare as she provides a wide range of insights to support clients including drivers of child protection involvement, community-based services and approaches to serving families, key state and federal child and family well-being initiatives, implementation of complex, cross-system initiatives, and more. She has a strong track record of forging, maintaining, and strengthening relationships with critical child welfare stakeholders including legislatures, providers, state associations, advocates, and public sector professionals. Her critical connections in this space help open doors for clients and support them in fulfilling their unique missions.