Transcript Slide 1

Foster Care and Adoption
in 21st Century Child Welfare
Practice
The American Adoption
Congress:
Take the Freedom Trail to
Truth in Adoption
Wakefield, MA
March 9, 2007
Major Changes in Foster Care in
Last Ten Years
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Signing of Adoption and Safe Families
Legislation, 1997
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Creation of Child & Family Service Review
System in States, 2001
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Movement Toward Dual Licensure, 1998
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Signing of Chaffee Legislation, 1999
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Focus on Permanency for Older Youth, 2002
Some Statistics About Youth In
Foster Care
AFCARS (Adoption and Foster Care
Analysis and Reporting System) data, as of
September, 2005, indicates that there are:
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513,000 children and youth in foster care
youth ages 11 years and up accounting
for forty nine percent (n=220,564)
Race/Ethnicity
Nationally, 56% of the children and youth in
care are children and youth of color:
32% African American; 18% Latino; Indian
Children in many states are overrepresented as well, especially in South
Dakota where 3% of the population identify
as Indian and 63% of the children and youth
in the foster care systems are of Indian
ancestry.
Permanency Planning Goals
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Reunification – 51%
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Adoption – 20%
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Relative care – 4%
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Despite the fact that it was stricken from the ASFA
statue, 7% (n= 37,628) of these children and
youth had a goal of Long Term Foster Care.
6% or 31,928 youth had a goal of emancipation.
Children And Youth Waiting to Be
Adopted
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On September 30, 2005, 114,000 were
waiting to be adopted. Waiting children
and youth are identified as those who
have a goal of adoption and/or whose
parental rights have been terminated.
Who Adopted These Young
People?
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During FY 2005, 51,000 children or youth
were adopted from the public foster care
system. 89% will receive an adoption
subsidy.
60% of young people were adopted by a
foster parent
25% were adopted by relatives
15% were adopted by non-relatives.
Who Adopted These Young
People?
 60%
of young people were
adopted by a foster parent
What is the family structure of the
child’s adoptive family?
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Married Couple - 68% (34,898)
Unmarried Couples - 2% (797)
Single Females - 27% (13,822)
Single Males - 3% (1,483)
What is the family structure of the
child’s adoptive family?
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What about lesbian and gay headed
families?
An area of untapped resource
Defining Permanency
Permanency planning involves a mix of:
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family-centered
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youth-focused
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culturally relevant philosophies, program components
and practice strategies.
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency
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Targeted and appropriate efforts to
ensured safety, achieve permanence,
and strengthen family and youth wellbeing.
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Reasonable efforts to prevent
unnecessary placement in out-of-home
care when safety can be assured.
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency
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Appropriate, least restrictive out-of-home
placements within family, culture and community with comprehensive family and youth assessments,
written case plans, goal-oriented practice and
concurrent permanency plans encouraged.
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Reasonable efforts to reunify families and maintain
family connections and continuity in young people’s
relationships when safety can be assured.
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency
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Filing of termination of the parental rights petition at 15
months out of the last 22 months in placement - when
in best interests of the youth and when exceptions do
not apply.
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Collaborative case activity - partnerships among birth
parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, the youth,
agency staff, court and legal staff, and community
service providers.
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency
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Frequent and high quality parent-child
visiting.
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Timely case reviews, permanency hearings
and decision-making about where youth will
grow up - based on the young person’s
sense of time – non-adversarial approaches.
Essential Family Centered Practice
Elements to this Process
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Everyone deserves to be heard
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Everyone deserves respect
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Everyone has strengths
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Judgment can wait
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Partnership is a process
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Partnership means sharing power
Permanency for Youth
They’re always talking about this Permanency stuff.
You know social workers. . .lawyers . . . always using
these big social work terms to talk about simple things.
One day one of them finally described what she meant
by permanency.
After I listened to her description, which was the first
time anyone ever told me what the term meant, I said,
“Oh, that’s what you mean? Yeah, I want permanency
in my life. I don’t think I ever had that! When can I get
it?”
Foster care youth
Permanency for Youth
Permanency flies in the face of typical
adolescent development.
I want to be on my own!
I want my own crib!
I don’t want nobody telling me what to do!
I don’t want a family!
Permanency for Youth
But . . . every youth needs life time
connections with someone, not just
for their childhood, but for their entire
life!
Principles of Youth Permanency
Seven key foundational principles:
1. Recognize that every young person is
entitled to a permanent family
relationship.
Principles of Youth Permanency
2. Permanency can be driven by the
young people themselves, in full
partnership with their families and
the agency in all decision-making
and planning for their futures,
recognizing that young people are
the best source of information
about their own strengths and
needs.
Principles of Youth Permanency
3. Acknowledge that permanence
includes: a stable, healthy and lasting
living situation within the context of a
family relationship with at least one
committed adult; reliable, continuous
and healthy connections with siblings,
birth parents, extended family and a
network of other significant adults; and
education and/or employment, life skills,
supports and services.
Principles of Youth Permanency
4. Begin at first placement.
Principles of Youth Permanency
5. Honor the cultural, racial, ethnic,
linguistic, and religious/spiritual
backgrounds of young people and
their families and respect differences
in sexual orientation.
Principles of Youth Permanency
6. Recognize and build upon the
strengths and resilience of
young people, their parents,
their families, and other
significant adults.
Principles of Youth Permanency
7. Ensure that services and supports
are provided in ways that are fair,
responsive, and accountable to
young people and their families, and
do not stigmatize them, their families
or their caregivers.
Pathways to Permanency for Youth
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Youth are reunified safely with their parents or relatives
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Youth are adopted by relatives or other families
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Youth permanently reside with relatives or other families
as legal guardians
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Youth are connected to permanent resources via fictive
kinship or customary adoption networks
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Youth are safely placed in another planned alternative
permanent living arrangement which is closely reviewed
for appropriateness every six months
I Always Thought I Was Adoptable . .
I always thought that I was adoptable even though
I was 16 years old, but my social worker kept
saying I was too old every time I asked him about
it. I worked after-school at this hardware store and
the guy who owned it was so kind to me. He was
such a good guy and I always talked to him. I
never really told him I was in foster care, but one
day when we got to talking, he started to ask me a
lot of questions about my family and then about
life in foster care. I invited him to my case
conference because my social worker said I could
invite anyone who I wanted to, and at that point he
asked about adoption. I was shocked at first, but
it made sense. We finalized my adoption three
months ago. That day was the happiest day of my
life.
- Former foster youth
Adoption of Adolescents
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Adoption, has become the permanency goal
for a growing number of children and youth
in care since the enactment of ASFA
Adoption is considered the preferred
permanency option, when youth cannot be
safely reunited with their families.
Adoption of Adolescents
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Reconceptualization of adoption for older
youth will require expanded permanent
options that meet the youth’s need for
lifelong, meaningful relationships.
Open adoption, shared parenting, and
practices which permit the adopted youth to
maintain contact with their birth family
members are contemporary approaches
which support permanency and may be useful
for practitioners to consider in exploring
the array of permanency options for youth.
Adoption of Older Adolescents
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ASFA explicitly rejects the notion that there is an
“age limit” for adoption or that adolescents are
“too old” to be adopted. Adoption is a viable
option for adolescents, who have a critical role to
play in identifying their own potential adoptive
resources.
Too often, it is the misplaced fear that adoption
will lead to the severing of their emotional ties
with members of their birth families that leads
some adolescents to reject the idea of adoption
for themselves. Adolescents, along with child care
staff, caseworkers, mental health professionals
and others, need help to understand that the
nature of adoption has undergone a radical
transformation over the past several decades.
Adoption of Older Adolescents
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The participation of adolescents in planning for
their own adoption is critical. Adolescents need
to be actively involved in identifying past and
present connections that can be explored as
potential adoptive resources.
Young people 18 and older should be informed
by their caseworker that they can consent to
their own adoption and that there is no need
for legal proceedings to terminate their parents’
parental rights.
Leadership in Promoting an Adoption
Positive Approach
It is incumbent upon adults who have a
relationship with the young person to help
them to consider the option of lifetime
connections by helping to reframe the initial
“NO!” into a “YES” or “I’ll Think About it”
response.
It may initially help the young person to review
their past connections and experiences to
help put their thoughts and feelings into
context.
Leadership in Promoting an Adoption
Positive Approach
Helping youth to play an active role in their own
planning and assisting them in developing a
promising pathway to permanency that will be
lifelong and sustaining can be a challenge, but it
is not an unattainable goal.
Helping youth to consider permanency and
lifetime connectedness only becomes possible
when adults who work with young people are
committed to facilitating the identification of
connections in their lives.
Changing the Initial “NO” to “Yes”
Exploring the permanency option of adoption is a process, not
a one time event.
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“I don’t want to give up past connections”
“I don’t want to lose contact with my family”
“I don’t want to lose contact with important people”
“I will have to change my name”
“No one will want me”
“I am too destructive for a family”
“Families are for little kids”
“I don’t want to betray my birth family”
“Mom said she would come back”
“I want to make my own decisions”
“I’ll just mess up again”
“I don’t want to risk losing anyone else”
How to Approach Adoption with
Adolescents?
What do you say instead of accepting NO
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Who are the three people in your life with whom you have
had the best relationship?
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Would it help to review where you have lived in the past to
help you recall important adults in your life?
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To whom have you felt connected to in the past?
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Who from the past or present that you want to stay
connected to? How? Why?
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How are you feeling about this process? What memories,
fears, and anxieties is it stirring up?
What do you say instead of accepting
NO?
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Who cared for you when your parents could not? Who
paid attention to you, looked out for you, cared about
what happened to you?
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With whom have you shared holidays and/or special
occasions?
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Who do you like? feel good about? enjoy being with?
Admire? look up to? want to be like someday?
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Who believes in you? stands by you? compliments or
praises you? appreciates you?
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Who can you count on? Who would you call at 2 am if
you were in trouble? Wanted to share good news? Bad
news?
What Else Can You Do?
Carefully Review the Case Record
Review the youth’s entire case record in search of anyone
who has done anything that could be construed as an
expression of concern for the youth, including former foster
parents, former neighbors or parents of friends, members of
their extended families (aunts, uncles, cousins, older
siblings), teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, group home
staff, or independent living staff. Given that some youth
have been in care for prolonged periods of time, case records
can have many volumes – the entire record – all volumes
should be explored in an effort to uncover clues about
possible connections both past and present. Third party
reviewers can be helpful in the process of uncovering these
possible connections as case workers who have been assigned
the case may inadvertently miss connections that may be
more visible to as fresh eye.
Work With Youth to Identify
Important Adults in their Life
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Work with the youth to identify caring,
committed adults with whom the youth would
like to establish a connection or re-establish a
former connection. Youth should be asked who
they feel most comfortable with, who they
trust (or with whom they might like to build a
trusting relationship) and who they feel they
have formed bonds to, such as former foster
parents, former neighbors, parents of close
friends, members of their extended family,
group home staff, cafeteria workers,
maintenance staff, administrators, teachers,
coaches, and work colleagues.
Carefully Look at Foster Parents and
Others Known to the Youth
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Interview the young person’s current and former
foster parents, as well as group home staff and
child care staff to determine who the youth
currently has connections to: who does the young
person get telephone calls from? Who has the
young person had a special relationship with in the
past? Who visits the young person and whom does
the young person visit? Has the young person
formed a bond with any group home or child care
staff that might turn into a permanent connection?
Unpack the “NO”
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Discuss sensitively with the youth where
they might like to belong and to address the
strong feelings that might underlie a
statement by a young person that he or she
does not want to be adopted. A concurrent
adoption plan must include plans to help the
young person “unpack the ‘No’” and to find out
what underlies their reluctance to consider
adoption.
Provide Information About Adoption
to Youth and Family
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Engage the youth, his or her parents (if the youth
is not currently freed for adoption) and foster
parents or prospective adoptive parents in a
discussion about shared parenting and ongoing
contacts with members of the youth’s birth family
after the adoption. Youth and parents need help
understanding that although a termination of
parental rights ends the rights of the birth parents
to petition the court for visits or other contacts
with their child, a TPR does not prevent the young
person from visiting or contacting members of his
or her birth family.
Keep Searching for Permanent
Connections
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Identify permanency leads if a record
review and interviews with the youth
and staff do not yield possible
permanent connections.
Consider mentoring relationships
Prepare Families Who Wish to Adopt
an Adolescent
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Help prepare prospective adoptive
parents to understand the commitment
they are making when they undertake
to provide a permanent home for an
adolescent.
Provide On-Going Support
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Post-permanency services must be put
in place to support the adoptive
placement
Promoting Life Time Connections
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What would it take to maintain a life
long relationship with this youth?
Be a mentor, be a visiting resource, be
a friend . . . .
Involving Youth in Permanency Efforts
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Youth must be involved in the process and must
have input
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Many youth do want to be adopted, even if they
initially say no
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Youth need to be involved in recruitment efforts
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Youth need to be able to identify persons with whom
they feel they have connections
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Youth need to work with professionals who
understand them and enjoy working with them
In Summary...
 Believe
that permanency for
this teen is possible!
 Don’t take “No” for an answer
 Be ready to identify a
permanent life time connection
for every young person, one
young person at a time
 Be Youth-Focused!
 Take The Risk!
SOUL OF A SONG
When a woman in a certain African tribe
knows she is pregnant, she goes out into
the wilderness with a few friends and
together they pray and meditate until they
hear the song of the child. They recognize
that every soul has its own vibration that
expresses its unique flavor and purpose.
When the women attune to the song, they
sing it out loud. Then they return to the
tribe and teach it to everyone else.
SOUL OF A SONG
When the child is born, the community gathers
and sings the child’s song to him or her. Later,
when the child enters education, the village
gathers and chants the child’s song. When the
child passes through the initiation to adulthood,
the people again come together and sing. At the
time of marriage, the person hears his or her
song.
Finally, when the soul is about to pass from the
world, the family and friends gather at the
person’s bed, just as they did at their birth, and
they sing the person to the next life.
SOUL OF A SONG
In the African tribe there is one other occasion
upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at
any time during his or her life, the person
commits a crime or aberrant social act, the
individual is called to the center of the village and
the people in the community form a circle around
them. Then they sing their song to them.
The tribe recognizes that the correction for
antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and
the remembrance of identity. When you recognize
your own song, you have no desire or need to do
anything that would hurt another.
SOUL OF A SONG
A friend is someone who knows your song
and sings it to you when you have forgotten
it. Those who love you are not fooled by
mistakes you have made or dark images you
hold about yourself. They remember your
beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness
when you are broken; your innocence when
you feel guilty; and your purpose when you
are confused.
SOUL OF A SONG
You may not have grown up in an African
tribe that sings your song to you at
crucial life transitions, but life is always
reminding you when you are in tune with
yourself and when you are not. When you
feel good, what you are doing matches
your song, and when you feel awful, it
doesn’t. You may feel a little warble at
the moment, but so have all the great
singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find
your way home.”
Gerald P. Mallon, DSW, Exec. Director
The National Resource Center for Family
Centered Practice and Permanency
Planning
Hunter College School of Social Work
A Service of the Children’s
Bureau/ACF\DHHS
129 East 79th Street
New York, New York 10021
(212) 452-7043 – Direct Line
(212) 452-7475 - Fax
[email protected]
www.nrcfcppp.org