Allison, 11, had lived in foster care for three years and had not seen her birth mother in two years. Her father hadn’t visited recently either, and he was on his way to prison on a felony drug conviction.
Allison’s foster parent wanted to adopt her—and she was all for it.
But the father still had legal rights over his daughter, so the state of Texas did not consider adoption an option. Instead, the state’s plan was to keep her in foster care for the next seven years of her life.
Long-term foster care should not be a fallback
Casey Family Programs believes long-term foster care never should be the fallback for a failure to insist on finding safe, loving and permanent homes for children.
That value was on the mind of Ingrid Vogel, child welfare supervisor for Casey Family Programs’ Austin field office, which manages cases for about 50 children in foster care. Encouraged by her supervisors to propose innovative child welfare practices, Vogel initiated a project that got the state to re-evaluate the field office cases in which long-term foster care was settled upon as the “permanency plan” for the child.
Re-examining Allison's case
“There is no such thing as foster care that is permanent,” Vogel says. “We couldn’t let these kids just grow up in foster care when there were other possibilities for them. We owed it to them to at least take another look at their cases.”
She approached the Central Texas regional director of Child Protective Services about forming a team of CPS managers and Casey Family Programs staff to formally reconsider the cases. The response was positive: “Who do you need on the team and when do you need them?”
Eighteen youth find forever families through Casey Family Programs
Last year, 18 cases managed by Casey Family Programs went through the permanency project—or about one third of the Austin caseload. Most of the 18 children already have been placed with a permanent family—or are in the process of being placed— through safe reunification with birth families, or adoption by relatives or foster parents.
The success stories include Allison (not her real name), who was adopted by her foster parent last summer after the county attorney filed a petition to terminate the parental rights of the father.
By moving Allison out of foster care seven years earlier than originally planned, the state of Texas saved about $100,000 in foster care payments alone. And Allison got the security of knowing that her loving foster family was now her family for all time.
The permanency project also has found permanent homes and families for a 12-year-old boy whose father is on death row; a 15-year-old 18 boy who wanted to return home to his mother; and three sisters, ages 10 to 13, who have been bounced between several foster homes and need stability in their lives.
Ingenuity, initiative, cooperation
The Austin field office’s permanency project is further evidence that ingenuity and initiative—combined with the willingness of leaders of public child welfare systems to try new approaches in their work—improve the lives of children.
The state’s regional CPS office wants to spread the permanency project across its entire Central Texas caseload, conducting the re-evaluations without having to rely on outside resources.
In helping the Georgia Department of Human Resources establish its permanency roundtables, Casey Family Programs prioritized permanency over long-term foster care. The Austin field office permanency project shows that we are not encouraging public child welfare systems to do anything that we are not already doing ourselves.
Casey Family Programs doubles the number of children in permanent homes
Across our nine field offices, the number of children exiting foster care to permanent homes has increased from 26 in 2006 to 53 in 2008.
“As part of providing the best possible direct services we can to children in foster care and their families, we have put a top priority on permanency,” says David Berns, Casey Family Programs executive vice president for child and family services.
“We are delighted when the innovative practices we develop within our field offices get picked up and used on the outside by public child welfare systems. It reaffirms the good work of our staff as well as the entire foundation’s commitment to bettering the lives of children.”