This report shows how Casey Family Programs worked with the Georgia Department of Human Services and Care Solutions, Inc. to address permanency for nearly 500 children who had been in foster care for long periods of time.
This primarily qualitative report focuses on roundtable team member feedback obtained via on-site debriefings, evaluation forms and focused group discussions.
This report is a part of the Permanency Roundtable Project.
Participant Recommendations for Improvement
Participants provided many suggestions for improving the process.
Several key themes emerged:
- Training: Have more/better training and preparation, especially for case managers and master practitioners; include case managers in orientation and mock roundtables
- Paperwork: Condense/shorten/simplify paperwork; eliminate overlap with existing forms; improve the permanency status rating scale
- Scheduling: Improve scheduling; avoid holidays and rescheduling; hold fewer roundtables per day/week; avoid scheduling large blocks of staff time out of the office; check case manager schedules; schedule earlier in the life of a case (e.g., at start, after assessments are completed, within first two weeks, within first two months)
- Participants: Include additional parties – legal, mental health, service providers, foster parents, relatives, advocates, previous case manager (when assignment recently changed); involve other parties without preconceived notions about the child
- Action plans and time frames: Develop more realistic goals, recommendations and time frames; limit and/or prioritize strategies and action steps
- Implementation and follow-up: Improve/expedite the waiver process; support case managers in action plan implementation
Many of these changes have already been incorporated in Georgia's roundtables. We hope that report will help other jurisdictions implementing permanency roundtables.