Raising hope in Allegheny County
This story is one of a series written in connection with our 2024 Signature Report, A season of hope: Growing the role of families, which focuses on the importance of kin for children in foster care.
If you had children or grandchildren of your own that you couldn’t care for, who would you want to care for them?
In Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, that question has driven a child welfare approach that prioritizes kinship caregivers — family members and close family friends — as safe placements when children must be removed from their parents. This approach means 68% of children are placed with relatives, compared to a state rate of 45% and a national rate of 35%.
“There was a time when about 30% of our first placements were with kin, and now that is above 60%,” says Erin Dalton, director of Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services. “You don’t want kids to have to move. Why not go to family right away? They might not even realize that there’s been a change in situation for their family because it’s grandma or it’s their aunt or uncle.”
Allegheny County’s commitment to a kin-first culture relies on a partnership more than 30 years in the making. The county teams with A Second Chance, Inc. (ASCI), a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen and preserve healthy kinship families for children.
ASCI has kinship navigators placed within the county’s Office of Children, Youth and Families. When a child comes into care, the navigators begin with family finding, seeking to identify kinship connections for the young person as their first, and hopefully only, placement until they can safely return home.
“We believe in leaving children with their families. So even though they [temporarily] may not be with mom or dad, they’re at least still with a grandparent, a family friend, a teacher, where they can still see their family, go on vacations, holidays … and celebrate their birthdays with their birth parents or with their grandparents,” explains Misty Patterson, ASCI’s managing director of program and intake.
Caseworkers at A Second Chance visit families’ homes to make sure they are safe and appropriate placements. Then they make sure any basic needs are met: Is there a bed for the child? Do grandparents need help with transportation or school for their grandchildren?
Along with support for the child and the kinship caregiver, ASCI engages the birth parent — creating what they call “the triad” — to work toward reunification when safely possible, Patterson says.
“When we center the kinship triad first, we reap the benefits of child, family, kinship and community well-being,” says Dr. Sharon L. McDaniel, president and CEO of A Second Chance and treasurer of Casey Family Programs’ Board of Trustees.
‘A Second Chance gave me hope’
Though busy, Sara Tate is happy to be juggling two teens and a 4-year-old at three schools while she takes financial accounting classes and works at A Second Chance. She gets help from her sister, her mother and a cousin. For a couple of years, she needed more support. Starting in 2020, Tate’s children were separated — oldest daughter Harlym lived with Tate’s mother, baby Hope with her paternal grandmother and son Anthony with his dad — while Tate, fighting addiction, was incarcerated. Her youngest wasn’t even a year old.
“The family came together and everybody pitched in,” making sure the siblings got to see each other, Tate says. “I think being with family made them feel like they were still a part of their family.”
Even though she missed Hope’s first steps, Anthony and Harlym got to see them. Knowing that her children were with people who loved them let her sleep at night and “allowed me to get into the mental space that I needed to prepare to fight for my freedom.”
She is grateful for the investment in her family. “I felt like A Second Chance gave me hope. And then they literally gave me Hope. They gave me my baby.”
Learn more about the partnership between A Second Chance and the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.