Background:
The Current Challenges of Public Child Welfare
The
nation’s child welfare system faces a series of
daunting challenges:
- The
number of children in the care of the child welfare
system has continued to grow -- from 260,000 children
in out-of-home care in the 1980s to more than 550,000
in care by 2000.
- As
child welfare systems became overloaded, they were
unable to safely return children to their families
or to find permanent homes for them. Children have
therefore experienced much longer stays in temporary
settings.
- At
the same time, the number of foster families nationally
has dropped, so that fewer than 50 percent of the children
needing temporary care are now placed with foster families.
As a result of this disparity, child welfare agencies
in many urban communities have placed large numbers
of children in group care or with relatives who have
great difficulty caring for them. An infant coming
into care in our largest cities has a good chance of
being placed in group care, and may be without a permanent
family for years.
- Finally,
children of color are vastly over-represented in this
group of disadvantaged children.
The
good news is that during the past several years, a number
of state and local child welfare systems have seen a
reduction in the numbers of children coming into care
and have been able to increase the numbers of children
placed for adoption. However, the severity of the challenges
facing child welfare makes this an opportune time to
rethink the fundamental role of family foster care and
to consider very basic changes.
The Foundation’s interest in helping communities and public agencies
confront these challenges is built upon the belief that smarter and more
effective responses are available to prevent child maltreatment and to
respond more effectively when there is abuse or neglect. Often families
can be helped to safely care for their children in their own communities
and in their own homes -- if appropriate support, guidance, and help
is provided to them early enough. However, there are emergency situations
that require the separation of a child from his or her family. At such
times, every effort should be made to have the child live with caring
and capable relatives or with another family within the child's own community
-- rather than in a restrictive institutional setting. Family foster
care should be the next best alternative to a child's own home or to
kinship care.
A
Response to the Challenge: The Family to Family Initiative
 With
the appropriate reforms in policy, resources,
and programs, family foster care can respond
to the challenges of out-of-home placement
and be a less expensive and more humane choice
for children and youth than are institutions
or other group settings. Family foster care
reform, in and of itself, can yield important
benefits for families and children -- although
such reform is only one part of a larger
agenda designed to address the overall well-being
of children and families currently in need
of child protective services.
Family to Family was designed in 1992 and has now been field tested in
communities across the country, including Alabama, New Mexico, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and Maryland. Los Angeles County is in the early stages of implementation
of the initiative. New York City has also adopted the neighborhood and
family-centered principles of Family to Family as an integral part of
its reform effort. New sites in the process of joining Family to Family
include Illinois, San Francisco, Oregon, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina,
Colorado, and Santa Clara County, CA.
The Family to Family Initiative provides an opportunity for states and
communities to reconceptualize, redesign, and reconstruct their foster
care system to achieve the following new system-wide goals:
- To
develop a network of family foster care that is more
neighborhood-based, culturally sensitive, and located
primarily in the communities in which the children
live.
- To
assure that scarce family foster home resources are
provided to all those children (but to only those children)
who in fact must be removed from their homes.
- To
reduce reliance on institutional or congregate care
(in shelters, hospitals, psychiatric centers, correctional
facilities, residential treatment programs, and group
homes) -- by meeting the needs of many more of the
children currently in those settings through relative
or family foster care.
- To
increase the number and quality of foster families
to meet projected needs.
- To
reunify children with their families as soon as that
can safely be accomplished, based on the family's and
children's needs -- not simply the system's time frames.
- To
reduce the lengths of stay of children in out-of-home
care.
- To
better screen children being considered for removal
from home, and to determine what services might be
provided to safely preserve the family.
- To
decrease the overall number of children coming into
out-of-home care.
- To
involve foster families as team members in family reunification
efforts.
- To
become a neighborhood resource for children and families
and invest in the capacity of communities from which
the foster care population comes.
The new system envisioned by Family to Family is designed to:
- better
screen children being considered for removal from home,
to determine what services might be provided to safely
preserve the family and/or what the needs of the children
are;
- be
targeted to bring children in congregate or institutional
care back to their neighborhoods;
- involve
foster families as team members in family reunification
efforts;
- become
a neighborhood resource for children and families and
invest in the capacity of communities from which the
foster care population comes; and
- provide
permanent families for children in a timely manner.
The Foundation's
role has been to assist states and communities with a portion
of the costs involved in both planning and implementing innovations
in their systems of services for children and families, and
to make available technical assistance and consultation throughout
the process. The Foundation also provided funds for development
and for transitional costs that accelerate system change.
The states, however, have been expected to sustain the changes
they implement when Foundation funding comes to an end. The
Foundation is also committed to accumulating and disseminating
both lessons from states' experiences and information on
the achievement of improved outcomes for children. We will
therefore play a major role in seeing that the results of
the Family to Family Initiative are actively communicated
to all the states and the federal government.
The states selected to participate in Family to Family are being funded
to create major innovations in their child welfare system -- to reconstruct
rather than merely supplement current operations. Such changes are certain
to have major effects on the broader systems of services for children,
including other services within the mental health, mental retardation /developmental
disabilities, education, and juvenile justice systems, as well as the rest
of the child welfare system. In most states, the foster care system serves
children who are also the responsibility of other program domains. In order
for the Initiative to be successful (to ensure, for example, that children
are not inadvertently "bumped" from one system into another),
representatives from each of these service systems are expected to be involved
in planning and implementation at both the state and local level. These
systems are expected to commit to the goals of the Initiative, as well
as re-deploy resources (or priorities in the use of resources) and if necessary
alter policies and practices within their own systems.
Current Status of Family to Family
At the outset of the Initiative in 1992, the accepted wisdom among child
welfare professionals was that a continuing decline in the numbers of foster
families was inevitable; that large, centralized, public agencies could
not effectively partner with neighborhoods; that disadvantaged communities
could not produce good foster families in any numbers; and that substantial
increases in congregate care were inevitable. Family to Family is now showing
that good foster families can be recruited and supported in the communities
from which children are coming into placement. Further, dramatic increases
in the overall number of foster families are possible, with corresponding
decreases in the numbers of children placed in institutions, as well as
in the resources allocated to such placements. Initial evaluation results
are now available from the Foundation. Perhaps most important, Family to
Family is showing that child welfare agencies can effectively partner with
disadvantaged communities to provide better care for children who have
been abused or neglected. Child welfare practitioners and leaders -- along
with neighborhood residents and leaders -- are beginning to develop models,
tools, and specific examples (all built from experience) that can be passed
on to other neighborhoods and agencies interested in such partnerships.
Adapted from Annie E. Casey Foundation's Tools for Rebuilding
Foster Care.
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