 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
CONCURRENT PERMANENCY PLANNING
THE VISION FOR OLDER ADOLESCENTS
. . . for all children for whom a County Department of Social Services has
legal custody or placement responsibility.
For many DSS social workers, the goal of a year to permanence may seem the most difficult to reach. Children who have already been in the foster care system for more than a year still outnumber those who return home or achieve other permanency within a year. As efforts have increased to remove children in only the most desperate of circumstances, the children entering foster care placement are, on the whole, more challenging. Many children in foster care placement have already experienced multiple moves and, with their damaged ability to trust, options for permanency seem increasingly remote. Some are children with multiple handicaps that are loved and valued by their foster parents, but for whom adoptive or guardianship placement would jeopardize the funding streams necessary for their continued care. Some are older teenagers for whom no recent efforts have been made to find placement options.
The goal of a year to permanency is reflected within the data collection system: neither “Permanent Foster Care” nor “Independent Living” is allowable as a permanent plan goal. This change resulted for several reasons.
• When the agency starts with the end in mind, timely permanency for children entering the system is highly likely. Concurrent permanency planning is one of the tools that helps to assure that children do not languish in foster care when reunification is no longer the plan.
• Permanent or Long Term Foster Care is a contradiction in terms. Foster care is, by definition, a temporary living arrangement. The foster parent has no legal commitment to the child, since the agency maintains custody of the child. The living arrangement is always subject to change based on the request of the foster parent or the decision by the agency. There is no assurance that the child will continue to have access to the foster parent as a living or emotional resource after they reach the age of majority. Such a situation does not encourage trust.
• Likewise, Independent Living as a “permanent plan goal” relieves the agency of responsibility for helping the child find a permanent home that lasts beyond their eighteenth birthday. It is a “plan goal” that is more frequently based on the child’s age than on the child’s needs for stable, positive relationships with adults.
• The agency has the responsibility of never giving up on permanency for children in its custody or placement responsibility. Agencies that participated in the Families for Kids initiative and adopted the vision learned from experience that a number of these children did find permanency through adoption or guardianship. They also learned that by continuing to seek out permanent goals, children became connected to adults who may eventually become permanent resources.
This section contains information on:
• Concurrent Permanency Planning; and
• The Vision for Older Adolescents in Foster Care Placement.
Concurrent permanency planning is a process of working towards a primary permanent plan, such as family reunification, while developing at least one alternative permanency plan at the same time. It is a case management method effective in reducing the length of time a child spends in foster care placement.
When a child enters foster care, the primary plan is usually reunification, with the parents or caretakers from whom the child is removed. In concurrent planning, the social worker is developing at least one alternative permanency plan jointly with the family. If the Juvenile Court determines that reunification is not possible because it is inconsistent with the child’s needs for safety and permanency, the alternative plan is implemented. Alternative permanency options include adoption, legal guardianship with relative or other approved caretaker, or legal custody with relative or other approved caretaker.
Concurrent permanency planning provides support and clear structure to families while keeping the focus on the child’s urgent needs for both safety and permanence.
Concurrent planning is a tool that helps social workers to meet the requirements of Public Law 96-272 (Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980) and Public Law 105-89 (Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997).
North Carolina law requires a permanency planning court hearing at least within 12 months of placement to achieve a safe, permanent home for a child in foster care within a reasonable period of time. Therefore, county Departments of Social Services must be considering options for permanent placements for children removed from their homes throughout agency involvement with the family. The agency must be prepared to make recommendations about permanency options to the Court at the permanency planning hearing and other review hearings.
When a child enters foster care, concurrent permanency planning begins with a thorough review of the case. The social worker must assure that all team members understand the history of the child and family and of the agency’s involvement with the family. The one social worker/ casework team organization facilitates the process of case review because no information is lost in the transition from intake through placement.
Concurrent permanency planning ideally begins before a child enters a foster care placement. Throughout the agency’s involvement with the family, the social workers should be gathering information that will assist in developing permanency options. Questions to answer include:
A thorough review of a foster care case lays the foundation for a solid concurrent permanency planning process. Understanding the context in which the child exists at the time a social worker receives a new case guides the development of a good case work plan. A thorough case review builds the foundation for a good legal plan as well, to move the child to safety and permanency. Social workers must work closely with the Juvenile Court system to achieve positive results for children. The facts of the case throughout the agency’s involvement with the family are most important to building a good legal plan. A good case work plan that is thoroughly documented is a good legal plan.
Critical questions in reviewing cases and beginning the concurrent planning process include:
An assessment of family strengths and needs, together with the family, is critical. The assessment of family strengths and needs is the basis for developing the Out of Home Family Services Agreement. The Out of Home Family Services Agreement must be developed jointly with the family. The Out of Home Family Services Agreement is required in policy to be completed within the first 30 days of a child’s placement in foster care. Therefore, the first family strengths and needs assessment must occur in those first 30 days. An assessment of family strengths and needs will also be a ongoing process throughout the agency’s involvement with the family.
The Family Strengths and Needs and Family Reunification Assessment are the required tools to use in the process of assessing family strengths and needs. Refer to dss-5229 and dss-5227 forms for more information.
In assessing family strengths and needs, the critical issue or issues that brought the child into foster care must be identified. Reunification efforts outlined as activities in the Out of Home Family Services Agreement must be directed at those problems that directly impact the child’s safety and health. There may be many other needs within families that do not directly effect the child’s safety and health. Secondary issues may be identified and addressed, but they are not the primary focus of reunification efforts. To identify the critical issue, the assessment team should clearly identify the conditions that must change in order for this child to be reunited safely with the family.
The Out of Home Family Services Agreement:
The Out of Home Family Services Agreement is family-centered because families help to identify the objectives and activities needed to address the problems that led to agency intervention. Completion of activities and progress or lack of progress toward the plan’s objectives must be documented thoroughly on the Out of Home Family Services Agreement.
The assessment of family strengths and needs should also include a reasoned assessment of the probability that the child will return home, based on the family’s capacity to benefit from services aimed at reunification. Most families whose children enter foster care have the potential to make use of services and to improve the conditions in the home that necessitated their child’s removal. Many families have appropriate relatives and other kin to take care of their children when the parents cannot. Some families, however, are so dysfunctional and lacking in support systems that agency intervention is not likely to make a meaningful difference in their quality of parenting. Social workers must identify early those families in which reunification efforts are not likely to be successful.
The social worker or casework team should begin a search for relatives or other members of the kinship network immediately when receiving a new case. Often, relatives and other members of the kinship support network are identified when the case is open for child protective services. Whether or not relatives were identified earlier in the agency’s history with a family, a social worker who is receiving a new foster care case or who is receiving an open foster care case is responsible for assuring a thorough and documented search for relatives and kin.
This process includes:
Accomplishment of these steps within the first 30-90 days of placement sets the groundwork for a family-centered, culturally competent concurrent planning process.
The social worker should develop a genogram with the family in order to identify family members and their relationships and should develop an ecomap with the family in order to identify friends, neighbors, agencies, churches, service providers and others that serve as a source of support or a source of conflict to the family.
The primary permanency plan is usually reunification. Reasonable efforts to reunify families after a child has been placed in foster care are required by law, unless the Court has determined that reasonable efforts are not required because these efforts would be futile or inconsistent with the child’s need for a safe, permanent home within a reasonable length of time. When the primary plan is reunification, a service plan is developed with the family and thoroughly documented on the Out of Home Family Services Agreement.
An alternative permanency plan is a back-up plan to achieve a safe, permanent home for a child within one year if and when reunification efforts fail. The alternative permanency plan is fully developed while the family is working for reunification. “Plan B” is then ready to implement if and when reunification efforts are ceased. With an alternative permanency plan, the child can achieve a permanent home much more quickly than if the social worker had waited to begin planning for a permanent home until after reunification ceased.
Alternative permanency options include adoption, legal guardianship or legal custody. Social workers should explore options for permanency with relatives or other kin and with foster parents and conduct early assessments of potential permanent placements. Social workers also begin the legal case building for termination of parental rights and, if adoption is the alternative permanency plan, begin collecting the required information for the adoption process. The development of the alternative permanency plan should be thoroughly documented and attached to the Out of Home Family Services Agreement.
Concurrent permanency planning requires full disclosure of information with parents. The process is family centered; therefore, social workers must be open and honest with parents and must tell them directly:
With full disclosure, parents are fully aware of the alternative permanency plan for their child. Parents should be told that an alternative plan is not an attempt to undermine their efforts to reunify with their child, but rather the alternative plan is a plan for permanency only if reunification fail. Parents must understand that foster care, by its very nature, has the potential to harm their child and that it is in their child’s best interest to have a plan that helps them achieve permanency quickly. The longer children live with the uncertainty of foster care, the greater harm to the their development. Full disclosure ensures that parents understand the consequences of foster care and empowers them to choose the options that are best for them and their children.
Full disclosure also means that social workers provide open and honest information to all others that are significant to the case. Social workers should explain, as needed, to parents, relatives, foster/adoptive families, attorneys, other service providers, etc. the following information:
Discussion of voluntary relinquishment of parental rights should be an integral part of the agency’s work with parents, because adoption is an option to provide permanency for children. Parents need to know all of their alternatives from the beginning if they are truly to be empowered to choose the future that is best for themselves and their children.
The Out of Home Family Services Agreement, when reunification is the primary plan, focuses on activities that are behaviorally specific and time limited. The parent’s behavior, therefore, determines the outcomes of the case. Parents are expected to complete activities and they must demonstrate progress toward the objectives of the case plan. Social workers must be clear with parents that progress depends on what parents actually do, not what they promise to do.
By using time limits, the case moves forward more quickly. Parents are expected to meet objectives of the Out of Home Family Services Agreeement within specified time frames and failure to do so will have consequences. Time limits are critical because placement of a child in foster care is a crisis for children. Social workers must treat every step of the case with a sense of urgency in achieving permanency for the child, whether through reunification or an alternative option. The crisis of foster care placement can serve as a motivator to engage parents in planning.
Legal requirements for timely court reviews and Permanency Planning Action Team reviews of cases are also tools for setting clear time limits and moving the case forward.
Parents and children who visit regularly are more likely to be reunified and effective visitation ensures that concurrent permanency planning is family-centered. A critical component of the Family Services Case Plan is a visitation plan based on the child’s age and developmental level that ensures frequent, regular and meaningful contact. Frequent visitation maintains the parents’ and child’s attachment to each other and keeps the child foremost in the parents’ thoughts and concerns. Parents can be more likely to work (and to work quickly) toward reunification when visiting frequently with the child. Visitation also provides opportunities for the social worker to observe whether parents are making progress on the objectives of the Family Services Case Plan and improving their parenting skills.
The agency social worker must have ready access to an assigned attorney to design and implement the case plan collaboratively. Throughout the life of the case, the social worker should scrupulously document the parent’s level of compliance and progress so that if it is necessary to terminate parental rights, the legal case will be well-prepared and ready for filing at that decision point. A good social work plan is a good legal plan, but carrying it out requires social worker/attorney to work together well. Without good legal support for social workers, children remain in foster care longer.
For court purposes, the social worker must keep written documentation on every attempt to provide services to the family and family’s response, including their progress in meeting objectives, as well as their efforts. Copies of reminder letters to parents, referral letters to evaluation and treatment providers, and reports received constitute legal evidence and should remain in the case file.
In many cases, the child can be placed in a permanency planning foster home (foster/adopt) so that if the plan to return home fails, he/she will not have to move again into an adoptive placement. Foster parents are recruited and trained as foster/adopt parents and are treated as partners in parenting while reunification is the primary plan.
Again, parents are fully informed. The value of potentially permanent placement is so vital for children’s well being, it must override objections based on fear that the placement will interfere with reunification efforts. The possibility of misuse exists, but we must not overlook the improper use of “temporary” care and what it has caused.
Assess Data: Gather data to understand foster care population demographics and to assess need for expedited permanency planning efforts; develop baseline data and indicators to track progress over time
Review Laws/Regulations/Policies Needed: Assess whether statutory and/or regulatory changes are needed to support timely decision-making and changes in federal law
Strengthen Commitment to Permanency Philosophy: Assess organizational commitment to implement family and community-centered practice; child-focused permanency planning; as well as open and inclusive approach to working with birth parents and foster/adoptive parents
Provide Leadership: Identify an agency “champion” to guide the initiative
Develop Stakeholder Support: Identify internal and external stakeholders who need to be involved and informed of philosophical, organizational and practice shifts (all levels of agency staff, courts, attorneys, community services, consumers, family representatives)
Develop Specialized Recruitment and Retention Strategies: To find and support resource families
Build Community Service Linkages: Identify and develop linkages with drug treatment, domestic violence, mental health, and health care services for families and children - so services can be front-loaded
Identify Program Policies / Procedures: Identify policies and procedures as well as case review systems needed to make the shift to concurrent from sequential case planning, case review and decision-making efforts
Provide Training and Support: Develop strategy to train staff, foster parents, stakeholders in concurrent permanency planning program and practice shifts
Teenagers are over-represented in the “foster care backlog,” often lagging behind in many of the goals included in the vision of Children’s Services. Most have already been in placement for more than one year; averaging over three years in care. Many have behavioral and emotional problems resulting from a lack of trust and bonding with their families, making placement in permanent homes with family or through adoption difficult. Most have endured a succession of placement assessments, social workers, and foster care or group placements.
Many youth entering care as teenagers are doing so because of a negative interaction between the teen’s developmental stages, parents without the skills to deal appropriately with the resulting behaviors, juvenile court involvement, and/or burned out community resources. Behaviors that are normal for teens are often exacerbated by life experiences, and their ability to relate constructively to adults in authority may be at least temporarily non-functioning. Services designed to prevent placement should include family assessment, parent education, family counseling, community mentors for the youth, and realistic opportunities for the youth to have legitimate experiences as a developing adult.
Even with effective placement prevention efforts, sometimes a respite is needed. County Departments of Social Services, seeking to meet the requirements of law, may seek to place the youth in “the most family-like environment possible,” often foster family homes. It may be unreasonable to expect some youth to relate to adults in a family-like environment. Through a series of failed foster family placements, youth move eventually to group homes or residential institutions where their behavior can be contained by the structure. By the time the youth get control of their behaviors, they have often “burned the bridges” back to relatives or other kin or to normalizing foster family homes. For many teens, a more appropriate plan is to first place the child in a structured environment that does not require extensive interaction between the teen and one or two caregivers for basic needs to be met. Group care facilities allow youth to form trusting relationships with adults more slowly, while negative behaviors are addressed through program structure and peer pressure.
For older youth newly entering care, the goals should be maintained as for any other foster child:
The primary goal for each child, including older foster teens, shall be a permanent family. This may mean reunification, adoption, custody or guardianship. Resources outside of the family may provide ongoing stability for these youth. Regardless of the permanent plan, older foster teens ages 16-21 shall be provided the help and support they need to become self-sufficient. With the active input of foster youth, county agencies should develop and provide appropriate independent living training and experiences, including the involvement of interested family and community mentors who can assist in developing social and employment networks, skill development, and establishment of long-term supportive relationships that can last into adulthood. Federal Independent Living funds, supplemented by county resources, are used to help acquire needed services.
Older foster youth, their families, kinship network, service providers and caregivers will participate fully in a single, coordinated assessment process that evaluates their strengths and needs as related to achievement of increased self-sufficiency. The assessment shall be the basis of planning for comprehensive services and youth development.
Older foster youth shall work directly with the social work team, consisting of the Independent Living liaison, permanency planning social worker, interested family and mentors, and caregiver in monitoring goal achievement and planning for further progress toward self-sufficiency.
Services shall be directed at the achievement of placement stability until a permanent plan is achieved or until the youth makes a satisfactory adjustment to an independent living arrangement as an adult. The DSS shall at all times seek a permanent, legally secure placement with suitable relatives or other kin, or placement in an adoptive home. If an appropriate placement is not found, placement will be provided in a foster home or facility that provides appropriate transitional training toward independent living.
Emancipated adolescents are rarely ready to assume the full responsibilities of adulthood, despite the protections that are designed to prevent premature emancipation. Most emancipated youth are unwilling to admit their need for assistance until their situation provides no other alternative. The agency should make every effort to negotiate services with these youth to help assure their successful transition to self-sufficiency. As with all voluntary services, both the agency and the youth have the right to terminate the contract for services at any time. Perhaps because of this fact, youth in this situation are more likely to exercise better judgment than they might if they have no choice.
11 Adapted for North Carolina from Linda Katz, Norma Spoonemore, and Chris Robinson: Concurrent Planning: From Permanency Planning to Permanency Action (1994) . Described in presentation by Sarah Greenblatt, Director, National Resource Center for Permanency Planning, at Concurrent Permanency Planning and Family Group Decision Making Conference, Raleigh, NC, February 3, 1998.
For more information about concurrent planning, this and other related publications can be ordered from: Lutheran Social Services of Washington and Idaho, Northwest Area, 6920 220th St. SW, Suite K, Mountlake Terrace, WA, 98043, (206)672-6009.
|
For questions or clarification on any of the policy contained in these manuals, please contact your local county office. |
| |||||||||||||