Reunion of Arizona Brothers and Foster Care Reform Programs

See Arizona CPS system brothers reunite after years apart [Arizona Central 7/14/12 by Mary K. Reinhart] for the story of two brothers separated in foster care and finally reunited.

The story also explains two foster care reform programs that Arizona will be implementing. One is called the 3-5-7 Model. The other is the Family Finding model.

“In their application for the federal grant, Arizona officials acknowledged that caseworkers, who handle two to three times the caseload recommended by state standards, don’t have time to “comprehensively review the child’s history to locate and recruit potential adoptive or permanent caregivers.”

Family members are often overlooked. That means strangers end up raising most children in Arizona’s foster-care system. The vast majority of those foster parents will have no contact with the child after he or she turns 18.

Arizona’s $11.5 million grant will fund two programs, the 3-5-7 Model and Family Finding, which have shown success elsewhere in the country.

The 3-5-7 Model, named for the number of questions and strategies employed, prepares older children for a new family, helping them deal with grief surrounding their family and time in foster care, before building new relationships.

Family Finding uses search tools to find extended family — people overlooked for various reasons or who may never have known they had a relative in foster care. The strategy also recognizes that family relationships need time to develop.

The grant also includes technical assistance, data collection and evaluation to see if the programs work for the kids at greatest risk of languishing in foster care.

“Children who are launched into a successful future are launched in a community of support, not just by a parent,” said Kevin Campbell, who developed Family Finding when he was an administrator at a Washington state non-profit organization.

Studies show many benefits to keeping children with family members when their own parents are unable to raise them. But Campbell said these aren’t always the best placements.

“What we have a history of is a very narrow search,” he said. “And typically we land on the closest relatives who have a close relationship to one of the parents, and (who have) some of the same problems.”

Campbell’s strategy stems from the International Red Cross model of finding family members after disasters. Using Internet services and genealogy records, Campbell locates dozens of relatives, as well as adults to whom the child has a connection, then narrows that group to 10 to 12 people willing to be part of the child’s life, now and into the future.

There is recognition, too, that the child may not be ready for a new family, and that families may not be ready for these children, who may have serious behavioral problems.

Studies show that children who have spent years in foster care carry emotional scars even after they are reunited with their parents, adopted or placed with other family members. The 3-5-7 Model prepares children for new families and new relationships by helping them to grieve the loss of their old ones.

Failure to work through those emotions leads to the types of behavior — anger, depression, defiance — that keep children in the foster-care system bouncing from one home to the next, said Darla Henry, a Pennsylvania social worker who developed the program.

“We didn’t think about how much kids love their families,” said Henry, who now trains other communities on her grief-and-loss strategy. “We threw away families. Not purposely, not intentionally, but we just assumed that if you hit your child you didn’t deserve to be in that child’s memory again.”

The key, she said, is for case managers to spend more time with children so they trust them and, eventually, express their feelings.

“Kids don’t grieve by appointment. Every day they’re responding to their pain,” Henry said.

The goal is for children to understand that they can love their parents, but acknowledge that their parents may not be the right ones to raise them, that it’s OK to trust someone else, to love someone else.

“What do they want most? … They just want to be like every other kid,” Henry said. “They’ll find their way when they’re in a safe relationship.”

“The Arizona Children’s Association, a non-profit child-welfare agency, won the contract to hire and supervise staff who will work with children in long-term foster care. Workers will be trained in Henry’s 3-5-7 Model, and supervisors will use Campbell’s Family Finding techniques to locate family members.

Beginning next month, CPS staff will begin selecting kids who have been in care at least a year and who have other factors likely to prevent their return home or successful placement with another family: parents who have lost their right to raise them; three or more placements in their first 100 days in foster care; or parents who are unable or unwilling to accept treatment for a mental-health or substance-abuse problem.

In addition to a regular CPS caseworker, a trained social worker will meet with each child, typically weekly. The goal is to have the child feel comfortable expressing deep-seated emotions.

The hope for other teens in foster care is that the state’s pilot programs will find the family support they so desperately need while preparing them to accept it.

Those who work with foster kids say one problem is they’re not allowed to be normal kids and make mistakes. Fighting or running away — often a symptom of the hurt and anger they feel — can mean juvenile detention. Breaking rules, like skipping school or drinking beer, can get them kicked out.

“They don’t have the normal learning experiences other kids have. They don’t get to go out on dates, have sleepovers, have cellphones,” said social worker Jason Patrone, who helps teens become independent through the Youth in Transition program at Jewish Family & Children’s Service. “All they have is adversarial experiences with kids in their same shoes.”

Most of Patrone’s kids don’t have family members looking for them, and most don’t have the resources to look for family themselves.

“Without that family connection, for a lot of these kids, we are their family,” Patrone said.”

Extreme Recruitment

The Family Finding Program reminds me of the review of “Extreme Recruitment” that Reformatina did in the first few days of this blog. See that here.

REFORM Puzzle Pieces