Resumen

Este informe breve comparte estrategias expertas para ubicar a los niños con familiares de inmediato.

Separar a los niños de sus familias es una experiencia traumática para todos los involucrados. Cuando los niños deben ser ubicados en cuidado fuera del hogar, una forma de mitigar ese trauma es colocar a los niños en el mejor entorno posible desde el principio: con una familia. Numerosos estudios han establecido que colocar a los niños con familiares, ya sean parientes biológicos o familia elegida  — es el la mejor opción para los niños, lo que da como resultado una mejor salud conductual y bienestar, mayor estabilidad y mayores niveles de permanencia que sus pares ubicados con cuidadores no parientes.^1,2 El cuidado por familiares permite que los niños sigan conectados con su familia y comunidad, lo que ayuda a reducir el trauma asociado con la separación de sus padres. Tras la colocación, los sistemas de bienestar infantil tienen la obligación de brindar a los cuidadores familiares el apoyo que necesitan para criar a los niños con éxito.

En el raro caso de que se hayan agotado todas las opciones para ubicar a los niños con familiares, la colocación en entornos familiares no relacionados es la siguiente mejor opción. Una familia puede brindar a los niños acceso a relaciones de apoyo, lo cual a menudo no es el caso cuando los niños son ubicados en entornos grupales o institucionales. Los niños pertenecen a las familias, no a las instituciones.

Fuera de casa, un informe centrado en la experiencia de los jóvenes en acogimiento residencial, concluyó que estos entornos a menudo no logran ofrecer relaciones afectivas y constantes, y en realidad prevenir los jóvenes construyan el tipo de relaciones necesarias para la sanación y una transición exitosa a la edad adulta. Las investigaciones sugieren que, en comparación con los jóvenes ubicados en entornos grupales o institucionales, los niños ubicados en hogares de acogida familiar tienen menos reubicaciones, pasan menos tiempo en cuidado fuera del hogar en general y tienen más probabilidades de ser ubicados con sus hermanos y cerca de su comunidad.³

La ley federal respalda la priorización de la colocación con una familia. El Ley de Servicios de Prevención «La Familia Primero» de 2018 Family First proporciona fondos federales de bienestar infantil para servicios iniciales destinados a apoyar la seguridad, la estabilidad y la permanencia de los niños mientras aún viven con sus familias. Busca reducir la dependencia excesiva del uso inadecuado de entornos que no se basan en la familia mediante el establecimiento de requisitos diseñados para garantizar que las instalaciones grupales e institucionales se utilicen únicamente cuando sea clínicamente necesario. La política federal también estipula que dichos entornos tengan un límite de tiempo, estén informados sobre el trauma y se centren en involucrar a la familia del niño durante y después del tratamiento, con el objetivo de preparar al niño para un rápido retorno a la vida familiar y comunitaria.

Reconociendo la importancia de la primera colocación de un niño y con el objetivo de que sea la única colocación del niño, varias jurisdicciones de bienestar infantil han se alejaron de realizar las colocaciones iniciales en guarderías de crisis, refugios de emergencia, centros de diagnóstico o centros de recepción, y están priorizando la colocación de niños con familiares, o con cuidadores en un entorno familiar, desde el principio. Este breve informe describe seis estrategias clave, compartidas por personas con experiencia vivida y líderes de agencias, que apoyan la primera colocación con una familia y, a su vez, mejorar la estabilidad de colocación y permanencia oportuna.⁴

Participación familiar auténtica implica mucho más que un asistente social que les da a los padres una lista de tareas esenciales para lograr una reunificación exitosa (como clases de crianza y sesiones de terapia). En el mejor de los casos, la participación familiar es colaborativa y da prioridad a la opinión de la familia a la hora de tomar decisiones y establecer metas. Este enfoque también debe extender a los padres y familiares paternos, quienes a menudo han sido excluidos de la toma de decisiones, pero desempeñan un papel fundamental al apoyar a sus hijos y facilitar una solución de permanencia oportuna.⁵ Involucrar a las familias también debe incluir priorizar la voz de los jóvenes en toda la planificación de casos preguntando directamente a los jóvenes dónde y con quién quieren vivir, y qué apoyos podrían necesitar.

Es común que las familias desconfíen y teman a la intervención del bienestar infantil. La participación familiar basada en la comunicación abierta y la colaboración entre los trabajadores sociales y las familias ayuda a equilibrar la dinámica de poder inherente que existe. “Es fundamental que las familias se sientan escuchadas y que sean el centro de la toma de decisiones que afecta sus vidas”, dijo Gail Geohagen-Pratt, comisionada adjunta de la Oficina para la Infancia y los Servicios Familiares del Estado de Nueva York. “A medida que el bienestar infantil busca transformarse, es fundamental que nos asociemos con las familias de manera significativa”.”

Cuando es necesaria una intervención de protección infantil, la mejor práctica consiste en brindar servicios a domicilio mantener a un niño seguro en el hogar con su familia cuando sea posible. Los servicios en el hogar incluyen una amplia gama de recursos, con el objetivo de proporcionar apoyos específicos para las necesidades particulares de una familia mientras:

• Garantizar la seguridad de los niños.
• Fortalecimiento de la capacidad de protección de los padres.
• Mejorar el funcionamiento general de los adultos, los niños y las familias.
• Desarrollo de habilidades de cuidado y afrontamiento.
• Fomentar relaciones sanas y enriquecedoras.
• Fomentar el bienestar físico, emocional, conductual y educativo, así como la salud mental.
• Aumentar las posibilidades de permanencia^.6

En Iowa El Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos proporciona apoyos a corto plazo para familias en crisis mientras se mantiene a los niños a salvo con familiares. Durante una reunión sobre la seguridad infantil, el personal de atención de casos, la familia y los defensores de la familia se reúnen para desarrollar medidas de acción inmediatas que eliminen o reduzcan el riesgo inminente que llevó a que la agencia se ocupara del caso. A la familia se le asigna entonces un asistente social que realiza visitas de seguimiento varias veces a la semana para asegurarse de que el niño permanezca seguro en el hogar y para ayudar a la familia a acceder a los recursos esenciales para completar con éxito los pasos identificados en el plan de acción.

Los niños merecen ser acogidos por familiares desde el principio. A pesar de los esfuerzos por aumentar el número de niños acogidos por familiares, muchas agencias de protección infantil siguen aplicando prácticas administrativas que no facilitan la acogida por familiares y que pueden dar lugar a que los niños sean acogidos por personas ajenas a la familia o en entornos grupales.

Changing the way caseworkers approach placement can be challenging, given systemwide structures that may be in place. Existing procedures — for example, having receiving centers and shelters as placement alternatives — may serve as deterrents to kinship placements as a first option. Instituting internal accountability safeguards, such as a director’s approval for any group or institutional placement, builds roadblocks and checkpoints into the system to help ensure placement with family is the default and therefore the norm, not the exception.

In 2012, the Filadelfia Department of Human Services instituted a commissioner’s approval process to ensure that group or institutional placements require the highest level of review before being approved. For approval, the caseworker must present the commissioner with key details that justify the need to place a child in a group or institutional setting and prove that all other options for providing care have been exhausted. Instituting these additional steps within the decision-making process was a catalyst for systemwide change, resulting in a substantial decrease of youth in these placements from 1,000 to 255 over a 10-year period. Kimberly Ali, commissioner, and Katherine Garzon, chief of staff, shared several recommendations for implementing a commissioner’s approval process:

• Examine data and other information with a racial equity lens to increase awareness of disproportionality in the system and create strategies to effectively address racial disparities and the role of bias in decision-making.
• Get buy-in from internal staff and external stakeholders — such as judges, probation officers, and child and family advocates — by sharing an overarching vision grounded in the agency’s values, and providing education on both the benefits of kinship care and the poor outcomes for youth placed in group or institutional settings.
• Expect resistance to new procedures. Placing children in group or institutional settings is often an easier process than identifying kin. Changing mindsets and behaviors likely will require an adjustment.
• Appoint dedicated staff who can review placement referrals in real time. Placement decisions often require immediate attention. Without dedicated staff, the approval process may create a barrier that prolongs placement, which can lead to further disruption and trauma for the child.
• Prioritize kinship care as an alternative to group or institutional placement. Actively engage the family and help identify kin.

En New York State Office of Child and Family Services implemented policy to make placement with kin the presumptive placement. This cortafuegos kin-first uses an extensive approval process that makes it difficult to place children in non-relative settings. Child protection agency staff must work with families to identify and consider relatives who could be a child’s first and only placement. Additionally, hired staff referred to as kinship champions partner with parents to identify kin —relatives and chosen family — as potential caregivers and provide caseworkers with administrative support to solidify safe and timely kinship placements for children. Since implementing the kin-first firewall, the number of children placed with kin has increased from about 1 in 5 placements to 1 in 3.

Placing children with kin is one way to ensure they stay connected to family, community, and culture. Child protection agencies and nonprofit organizations have developed a number of strategies to facilitate, establish, support, and maintain connections with kin for children in out-of-home care. An agency adopting a kin-first approach actively involves families, reduces or eliminates barriers to placing children with kin, and ensures families have access to an array of community-based supports. Georgia, Iowa, and New York have expanded the definition of “family” to include fictive kin (other adults who have a relationship with the child or the family, such as a family friend or day care provider). To increase the likelihood of kinship placement, Georgia implemented a use of voluntary kinship caregivers policy that allows parents to voluntarily place a child with a relative for up to 90 days as parents work to resolve any safety concerns. These planned placements can extend across state lines. Georgia has worked closely with its border states, such as Alabama, to develop a strong border agreement that allows caseworkers to quickly place children with a relative across state borders.

The Children’s Bureau provides clear guidance to child protection agencies about how to adopt standards for licensing and approving kinship homes that differ from non-relative foster family homes. The guidance is designed to support and ease the placement of children with their kin, with a dual goal to ensure more children are under the care of those who know and love them, and ensure kinship caregivers receive financial support equitable to that of non-kin caregivers.

Research has shown that placing a child with a non-relative caregiver of the same race can positively impact placement stability, and that recruiting resource caregivers with diverse identities and backgrounds helps to ensure children are placed with families that nurture and affirm their culture and identity.⁷ Implementing these strategies can help mitigate the overrepresentation of Black and American Indian/Alaska Native children in the child welfare system. The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) elevates the importance of keeping American Indian/Alaska Native children connected to their family, tribe, and culture in all placement decisions, and its principles serve as the est for supporting the well-being of all children. When racial and cultural matching is not possible, child protection agencies should provide caregivers with training and resources to increase cultural awareness.

Youth who identify as LGBTQ+ also are overrepresented in the child welfare system, with studies suggesting 15% to 30% of youth in care identify as LGBTQ+ compared to 3% to 11% of youth in the general population. Recruiting and supporting caregivers who celebrate and affirm the sexual and gender identity of the youth in their care is critical to reducing LGBTQ+ youth trauma and instability.

Children with unmet mental and behavioral health needs often experience placement instability. A comprehensive continuum of care that includes crisis response services can ensure children and their caregivers have access to the support they need, when they need it. Access to a comprehensive continuum of crisis care has been shown to deescalate urgent behavioral situations, stabilize, and improve outcomes for children, youth, and young adults. For example, Washington ha implementado un mobile crisis response program to help stabilize families while providing in-home therapeutic assessment and brief treatment for children in crisis. Trained workers address immediate crises and deliver ongoing outreach support, such as mental health services, community resources, and suicide risk assessments, to prevent future crisis. Similarly, Nueva Jersey has a mobile response and stabilization services intervention that dispatches a trained worker to a caregiver’s home within 72 hours of a child entering out-of-home care or transitioning to a new placement. This initial visit is framed to acknowledge the child’s trauma and plan for any behavioral challenges that might arise. In the event of a crisis, caregivers can call the program around the clock and a worker will arrive at the home within an hour to help deescalate the crisis, assess the situation, and develop a plan with the child and caregiver.

Behaviors of young people often are mislabeled as mental health issues rather than what they are — normal response to trauma. Ensuring all caregivers receive trauma-informed education and services to care for children can help minimize placement disruptions. Many child welfare jurisdictions offer programs that help kinship caregivers and foster parents build specific skills to care for the children in their homes successfully and help them thrive. One such program is KEEP, developed at the Oregon Social Learning Center and implemented in a number of jurisdictions across the country. KEEP is an evidence-based intervention designed to build caregiver skills for supporting children’s behavioral and emotional challenges. The program entails 16 weekly, 90-minute sessions with hands-on instruction and weekly consultations with the facilitator. Research indicates⁸ that KEEP decreases placement changes, child behavior problems, and caregiver stress, and increases reunification rates and foster parent retention.

All children in foster care deserve to be in families that are provided with financial supports and other resources, regardless of whether caregivers are kin or non-kin. A child protection agency bears the responsibility to develop solutions to provide the appropriate supports, and offer those supports in ways acceptable to an individual family.

Nosotros half of kinship caregivers live in poverty. Family members often are more than willing to care for children when there is adequate financial support to offset additional expenses associated with raising a child. Caseworkers should assess and address kinship caregivers’ financial and concrete needs, and then provide them with the supports to successfully secure placement.

Programas de orientación familiar also can be critical in connecting families with support, and several child welfare jurisdictions offer some form of kinship caregiver support. In Polk County, Iowa, a worker whose job is to ensure the identified relative caregiver is connected to all eligible benefits attends a pre-removal conference. In 2021, Iowa implemented a kinship caregiver payment program to financially support court-ordered kinship placements (including placements with fictive kin), as well as a kinship navigator program to connect kinship caregivers to community-based resources. A Second Chance, Inc., a kinship care provider in Condado de Allegheny, Pensilvania., makes sure that the caregivers it serves receive the same financial benefits as non-relative caregivers. Kinship caregivers are offered specialized services and support, including licensing, training, and case management. Prior to completing the licensure process, the caregivers can receive childcare assistance for younger children and a per diem to help offset additional financial expenses.

Additionally, caregivers should be supported through education, training and coaching, and by their caseworker. This helps develop healthy parent/caregiver relationships, access trauma and behavioral health services (for caregivers and youth), work through permanency considerations, understand cultural and family identity, and receive independent living supports for older youth and young adults to minimize the risk of disruption.

While kinship placement is preferred whenever possible, having available, trained, and supported non-relative foster caregivers also is key to placing children with families rather than in a group or institutional setting. Several strategies have been shown to effectively and efficiently recruit foster families to best meet the needs of the children in their care.

Further, caseworkers should create an open and clear line of communication for caregivers to express concerns, receive child- and family-specific information, and access resources to best care for the child. Open communication is the foundation to building ongoing, meaningful relationships with caregivers and is vital to successful retention. Caseworkers can become increasingly familiar with the strengths, skills, and preferences in their agency’s network of caregivers, which can help to quickly match children with appropriate homes that meet their specific needs.