Florida Administrative Code defines “Safety Plan” as the specific course of action necessary to control threats of serious harm or supplement a family’s protective capacities implemented immediately when a family’s protective capacities are not sufficient to manage immediate or serious harm threats.” 

A Safety Plan addresses a specific parent behavior, emotion, or condition that results in a child being unsafe. A Safety Plan controls and manages danger threats to a child when a parent/legal guardian is unavailable, unable, or unwilling to protect their child. A Safety Plan will be in effect as long as a case remains open.

Safety planning is an ongoing process, not an event, and should be developed jointly between the case manager and the family. The child welfare professional responsible for the case has primary responsibility for developing, monitoring, and managing the Safety Plan. As individual and family circumstances change, Safety Plans require updates based on the changes. 

In order to have confidence in the sufficiency of the Safety Plan we must analyze danger threats, family functioning, and family and community resources. This requires the collection of all relevant information so a decision can be made about the most appropriate and least restrictive means for controlling and managing identified danger threats to ensure child safety.

The child welfare professional creating, monitoring, or modifying the Safety Plan will:

• Ensure all new or updated Safety Plans are signed by all participants and uploaded into FSFN within 2 business days of its creation or modification.
• Ensure Safety Plan discussions and specific Safety Plan actions that providers are responsible for are documented in FSFN.
• Ensure the Safety Plan controls the behavior, emotion, or condition that results in the child being unsafe.
• Supervisor Consult MUST documented in FSFN to reflect review and sufficiency of the Safety Plan within 5 business days of initial case transfer or a new case assignment.
• Ensure the effect of a Safety Plan is immediate, and/or continues to protect the child every day.
• Ensure the Safety Plan describes each specific action necessary to keep the child safe, including:
  • Resources or people who will help with each action
  • The person responsible for each specific action (cannot be a parent with a case plan)
  • Specific frequency of the action, including times and days of the week (“ongoing” and “24/7” is NOT a frequency)
• Document contact with the person responsible for each safety action at least monthly or more frequently as needed to confirm the Safety Plan is working as intended.
• Develop separate Safety Plans with the perpetrator of domestic violence and the parent/legal guardian who is a survivor of domestic violence.
• DO NOT include promissory commitments by the parent/legal guardian who is currently not able to protect the child

Examples of INAPPROPRIATE Safety Plan actions include, but are not limited to:

• Mom will not spank
• Parents will remain sober
• Mom will file an injunction and not let the batterer back in the home
• Dad will not use drugs
• Parents will attend _____ services