Child Welfare Wonk: How Risk Aversion Raises Risk | September 21, 2026

Designed Not to Know: How We Perpetuate the Conditions That Discourage Child Welfare From Asking Life-Saving Questions

By Tiffany Lindsey, EdD, LPC/MHSP

Child welfare has inadvertently created a system where identifying a hazard can become evidence of liability. When caseworkers ask about unsecured medications, unsafe sleep, or firearm storage—and document what they find—agencies risk being held accountable for risks they cannot fully control. The result: workers learn to stay close to the allegation and avoid surfacing dangers they cannot eliminate. In this piece for Child Welfare Wonk, CHP’s Tiffany Lindsey reveals how blame-oriented accountability produces defensive practice rather than safety-focused work, and proposes a redesign based on human factors engineering—the same approach that has made medicine and aviation safer. The solution requires statutory protection for workers who ask safety questions and universal precautions that treat harm reduction as routine prevention.

Child Welfare Wonk: Safety & The Child Welfare Workforce | September 14, 2026

The Oxygen Problem: What Workforce Conditions Reveal About the Limits of What We Can Ask

By Michael Cull, PhD, MSN

Child welfare agencies operate under chronic understaffing, high turnover, and unsustainable caseloads—yet the field continues to demand near-perfect safety from these structurally depleted systems. In this deep-dive for Child Welfare Wonk, CHP’s Michael Cull examines why workforce conditions cannot be separated from child safety. Drawing on three decades of organizational research, Cull argues that the field has adopted the airplane oxygen mask metaphor without designing the systemic oxygen that makes safe performance possible. Instead of building resilience into the system, we’ve asked individual workers to manage their own depletion—a strategy that risks treating endurance as a personal attribute rather than a function of how work is organized and resourced.

Child Welfare Wonk | April 27, 2026

What if We’re Wrong About What Works? Why the Limits of Evidence in Child Welfare Matter for Policy

By Michael Cull, PhD, MSN

In this deep-dive piece for Child Welfare Wonk, CHP’s Michael Cull examines a fundamental challenge facing child welfare leadership: accountability structures are built on an assumption of certainty that the underlying evidence base cannot support. From the modest and variable outcomes of substance use treatment to the lack of research on widely implemented practice frameworks like Signs of Safety, Cull argues that the field’s accountability gap makes systems less safe — and charts a path toward leading with intellectual honesty under uncertainty.

The Imprint | 2025

Child Safety Policy Needs Better Data, Not Louder Debates

By Michael Cull, PhD, MSN & Elizabeth Riley, PhD

New research published in JAMA Network found no evidence that higher foster care entry rates reduce child maltreatment deaths at the state level. CHP’s Michael Cull and Elizabeth Riley argue that this finding is not a verdict on foster care — it’s a signal that U.S. child welfare policy is being driven by incomplete data systems never designed to answer the questions we keep asking. They call for federal investment in modernized, longitudinal child safety data and a national research agenda that treats child safety as a public health challenge.

EIN Presswire | June 10, 2026

Center for the Helping Professions Partners with Centerstone on National Suicide Care Initiative

The Center for the Helping Professions (CHP) is partnering with Centerstone’s Institute for Clinical Excellence and Innovation on a systems-focused national initiative supported by Four Pines Fund to help behavioral health organizations better review, understand, and learn from suicide attempts and near-fatal overdoses. Together, CHP and Centerstone are implementing a comprehensive critical incident review methodology designed to shift organizations from blame-focused responses to learning-oriented practices that improve coordination, strengthen care, and ultimately save lives.

PR Newswire | March 6, 2025

Center for the Helping Professions Launches as Nonprofit Dedicated to Safety Science and Systems Improvement

The Center for the Helping Professions (CHP) officially launched in March 2025 as a Tennessee-based nonprofit. Founded by CEO Michael Cull, PhD, COO Tiffany Lindsey, EdD, LPC-MHSP, and Chief Analytics Officer Elizabeth Riley, PhD, CHP applies safety science and evidence-based approaches to improve outcomes across child welfare, healthcare, and other safety-critical sectors. CHP’s tools include the Safe Systems Improvement Tool (SSIT) and the TeamFirst Assessment of Safety Culture (TASC).

For press inquiries, interview requests, or media resources, please email CHP-Press@riveracomms.com