Foster Care and Adoption in 21st Century Child Welfare Practice

1
Foster Care and Adoptionin 21st Century Child
Welfare Practice

• The American Adoption Congress
• Take the Freedom Trail to Truth in Adoption
• Wakefield, MA
• March 9, 2007

2
Major Changes in Foster Care in Last Ten Years

• Signing of Adoption and Safe Families
  Legislation, 1997
• Creation of Child Family Service Review System
  in States, 2001
• Movement Toward Dual Licensure, 1998
• Signing of Chaffee Legislation, 1999
• Focus on Permanency for Older Youth, 2002

3
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
• 513,000 children and youth in foster care
• youth ages 11 years and up accounting for
  forty nine percent (n220,564)

4
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 over-represented 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.

5
Permanency Planning Goals

• Reunification 51
• Adoption 20
• Relative care 4
• 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.

6
Children And Youth Waiting to Be Adopted

• 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.

7
Who Adopted These Young People?

• 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.

8
Who Adopted These Young People?

• 60 of young people were adopted by a foster
  parent

9
What is the family structure of the childs
adoptive family?

• Married Couple - 68 (34,898)
• Unmarried Couples - 2 (797)
• Single Females - 27 (13,822)
• Single Males - 3 (1,483)

10
What is the family structure of the childs
adoptive family?

• What about lesbian and gay headed families?
• An area of untapped resource

11
Defining Permanency

• Permanency planning involves a mix of
• family-centered
• youth-focused
• culturally relevant philosophies, program
  components and practice strategies.

12
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency

• Targeted and appropriate efforts to ensured
  safety, achieve permanence, and strengthen family
  and youth well-being.
• Reasonable efforts to prevent unnecessary
  placement in out-of-home care when safety can be
  assured.

13
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency

• 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.
• Reasonable efforts to reunify families and
  maintain family connections and continuity in
  young peoples relationships when safety can be
  assured.

14
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency

• 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.
• Collaborative case activity - partnerships among
  birth parents, foster parents, adoptive parents,
  the youth, agency staff, court and legal staff,
  and community service providers.

15
Family Centered Casework and Legal Strategies
Which Support Permanency

• Frequent and high quality parent-child visiting.
• Timely case reviews, permanency hearings and
  decision-making about where youth will grow up -
  based on the young persons sense of time
  non-adversarial approaches.

16
Essential Family Centered Practice Elements to
this Process

• Everyone deserves to be heard
• Everyone deserves respect
• Everyone has strengths
• Judgment can wait
• Partnership is a process
• Partnership means sharing power

17
Permanency for Youth

• Theyre 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, thats what you mean? Yeah,
  I want permanency in my life. I dont think I
  ever had that! When can I get it?
• Foster care youth

18
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 dont want nobody telling me what to do!
• I dont want a family!

19
Permanency for Youth

• But . . . every youth needs life time
  connections with someone, not just for their
  childhood, but for their entire life!

20
Principles of Youth Permanency

• Seven key foundational principles
• 1. Recognize that every young person is entitled
  to a permanent family relationship.

21
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.

22
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.

23
Principles of Youth Permanency

• 4. Begin at first placement.

24
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.

25
Principles of Youth Permanency

• 6. Recognize and build upon the strengths and
  resilience of young people, their parents, their
  families, and other significant adults.

26
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.

27
Pathways to Permanency for Youth

• Youth are reunified safely with their parents or
  relatives
• Youth are adopted by relatives or other families
• Youth permanently reside with relatives or other
  families as legal guardians
• Youth are connected to permanent resources via
  fictive kinship or customary adoption networks
• Youth are safely placed in another planned
  alternative permanent living arrangement which is
  closely reviewed for appropriateness every six
  months

28
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

29
Adoption of Adolescents

• 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.

30
Adoption of Adolescents

• Reconceptualization of adoption for older youth
  will require expanded permanent options that meet
  the youths 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.

31
Adoption of Older Adolescents

• 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.

32
Adoption of Older Adolescents

• 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.

33
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 Ill 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.

34
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.

35
Changing the Initial NO to Yes

• Exploring the permanency option of adoption is a
  process, not a one time event.
• I dont want to give up past connections
• I dont want to lose contact with my family
• I dont 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 dont want to betray my birth family
• Mom said she would come back
• I want to make my own decisions
• Ill just mess up again
• I dont want to risk losing anyone else

36
How to Approach Adoption with Adolescents?

• What do you say instead of accepting NO
• Who are the three people in your life with whom
  you have had the best relationship?
• Would it help to review where you have lived in
  the past to help you recall important adults in
  your life?
• To whom have you felt connected to in the past?
• Who from the past or present that you want to
  stay connected to? How? Why?
• How are you feeling about this process? What
  memories, fears, and anxieties is it stirring up?

37
What do you say instead of accepting NO?

• Who cared for you when your parents could not?
  Who paid attention to you, looked out for you,
  cared about what happened to you?
• With whom have you shared holidays and/or special
  occasions?
• Who do you like? feel good about? enjoy being
  with? Admire? look up to? want to be like
  someday?
• Who believes in you? stands by you? compliments
  or praises you? appreciates you?
• Who can you count on? Who would you call at 2 am
  if you were in trouble? Wanted to share good
  news? Bad news?

38
What Else Can You Do?

• Carefully Review the Case Record
• Review the youths 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.

39
Work With Youth to Identify Important Adults in
their Life

• 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.

40
Carefully Look at Foster Parents and Others Known
to the Youth

• Interview the young persons 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?

41
Unpack the NO

• 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.

42
Provide Information About Adoption to Youth and
Family

• 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 youths 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.

43
Keep Searching for Permanent Connections

• Identify permanency leads if a record review and
  interviews with the youth and staff do not yield
  possible permanent connections.
• Consider mentoring relationships

44
Prepare Families Who Wish to Adopt an Adolescent

• Help prepare prospective adoptive parents to
  understand the commitment they are making when
  they undertake to provide a permanent home for an
  adolescent.

45
Provide On-Going Support

• Post-permanency services must be put in place to
  support the adoptive placement

46
Promoting Life Time Connections

• What would it take to maintain a life long
  relationship with this youth?
• Be a mentor, be a visiting resource, be a friend
  . . . .

47
Involving Youth in Permanency Efforts

• Youth must be involved in the process and must
  have input
• Many youth do want to be adopted, even if they
  initially say no
• Youth need to be involved in recruitment efforts
• Youth need to be able to identify persons with
  whom they feel they have connections
• Youth need to work with professionals who
  understand them and enjoy working with them

48
In Summary...

• Believe that permanency for this teen is
  possible!
• Dont 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!

49
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.
•  

50
SOUL OF A SONG

•  
• When the child is born, the community gathers
  and sings the childs song to him or her. Later,
  when the child enters education, the village
  gathers and chants the childs 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
  persons bed, just as they did at their birth,
  and they sing the person to the next life.
•  

51
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.
•  

52
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.
•  

53
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
  doesnt. You may feel a little warble at the
  moment, but so have all the great singers. Just
  keep singing and youll find your way home.
•  

54

• 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 Childrens Bureau/ACF\DHHS
• 129 East 79th Street
• New York, New York 10021
• [phone] Direct Line
• [phone] - Fax
• Gmallon_at_hunter.cuny.edu
• www.nrcfcppp.org