Under the federal Fostering Connections Act, Texas recently began providing financial assistance to relatives when they became legal guardians of children who have been abused or neglected, cannot return home, or be adopted. This paper explores whether these payments have increased overall permanent placements with relatives or have only led relatives to shift from adoption to legal guardianship, thereby increasing permanency through legal guardianships, but potentially decreasing adoptions. Early evidence suggests that while there have been increases in both overall permanency and relative guardianship, the proportion of children being adopted by a relative has declined. Link to pdf Evaluation
Tag Archives: permanency
Engaging Families: Field Guide to Making Home Visits Matter
This field guide, intended for social workers, discusses strategies for engaging families during visits. It begins by urging social workers to use a solution focused approach and identifies core conditions for developing a relationship with families, including demonstrating genuineness, empathy, respect, and competence. A practice wheel is presented that describes strategies for engaging, teaming, assessing, planning, intervening, and tracking and adjusting. Steps are then discussed for working with resistance and developing a working agreement, and tasks that a worker or support person can do to assist families through each stage of the process of change are also reviewed. Following sections of the guide address: skills for engaging families, including strategies for eliciting solutions, interviewing techniques to promote exploration, and solution-focused questions; the cycle of need and possible need statements; outcome indicators for safety, stability, well-being, and permanency; and safety and stability considerations. Link to Field Guide
Neighbor to Family Sibling Foster Care Model
California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare: The Neighbor To Family Sibling Foster Care Model is a child-centered, family-focused foster care model is designed to keep sibling groups, including large sibling groups, together in stable foster care placements while working intensively on reunification or permanency plans that keep the siblings together. The program uses a community-based, team-oriented approach, including foster caregivers and birth parents as part of the treatment team. Trained and supported foster caregivers are key to the model’s success. Neighbor To Neighbor professionalized this key role by placing these trained foster caregivers on the payroll with salaries and benefits. Foster families, birth families, and children receive comprehensive and intensive services including individualized case management, advocacy, and clinical services on a weekly basis. Link to Program Description