Greetings Permanency Champions,
Story of the Week:
KTLA Morning News Anchor – Chris Schauble’s emotional search to find his birth parents
After an exhaustive six month search, KTLA Morning News Anchor Chris Schauble reaches the end of his journey to find his birth parents. It is an emotional and uplifting story; featuring the love of his birth mother and the powerful gift that adoption provides for many families. Find out more about Chris Schauble’s adoption search journey.
Current Permanency related articles:
Number of California Foster Youth Aging Out Cut Nearly in Half, for Now
The Chronicle of Social Change – The number of foster youth in California who age out at 18 has plummeted in the past two years, suggesting that its federal partnership to expand foster care until 21 has had a significant impact.
Ensuring Safety, Well-Being and Permanency – North Carolina Report (See Attachment)
In 1990, the Children’s Bureau began funding what would become one of the longest and most comprehensive studies of child abuse and neglect: LONGSCAN (Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect). For 20 years, researchers in five sites around the country followed more than 900 children from age 4 into adulthood, using a variety of research methods, including interviews with children, parent reports and observations, teacher reports, and maltreatment data from a variety of sources. More than 130 publications and 25 doctoral dissertations were based on LONGSCAN research. And to ensure that the research results extended beyond academia, the Doris Duke Foundation provided funding for LONGSCAN findings to be made more accessible to practitioners in the field through a “Science to Practice” initiative.
LONGSCAN investigators recently synthesized their overall findings and met with stakeholders around the country to discuss the results and their implications. Ensuring Safety, Well-Being and Permanency for Our Children: Findings, Practice and Policy Implications From LONGSCAN: The 20-Year Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect summarizes this work. The short publication uses succinct text and tables to reduce the many years of research into 12 sets of findings and implications under the categories of safety and health, permanency, and well-being.
Is Foster Care Really the Supply Chain for Domestic Sex Trafficking?
Child Welfare League of America – Children’s Monitor – What is needed in dealing with sexual exploitation is a comprehensive strategy whereby child welfare plays a role. What is needed in child welfare are improvements and resources that make sure all victims of abuse are treated, all children find permanent families, and no young person ages out without a family and a future. Child welfare has to be a part of any comprehensive solution to domestic sex trafficking, but the suggestion that it is the solution (and the blame) is at best off the mark. At worse, it is potentially harmful to children and youth who are in care as the last best hope when other systems—public, private and familial—have failed.
Legislation Would Bolster Child Welfare, Education Info Sharing
The Chronicle of Social Change – In the wake of a federal law giving child welfare agencies direct access to education records, legislation is moving in California to bolster its data sharing efforts. Assembly Bill 1878 creates a direct link between agencies and schools for the sharing of information when a child is in the foster care system.
Outcomes of Permanency Roundtables for Youth
Permanency roundtables (PRTs) have emerged as a strategy for expediting legal permanence for youth. In 2010, Casey Family Programs spearheaded the Multi-Site Accelerated Permanency Project (MSAPP), which used PRTs to improve permanency efforts in 11 counties in four States (Alabama, Colorado, Florida, and Ohio). PRTs are structured meetings that involve various experts, promote “outside the box” thinking, and include the following elements: oral case presentation, rating of the child’s permanency status, discussion and brainstorming of current barriers to permanency, and development of a specific action plan. In the summer of 2013, MSAPP released a report on the outcomes for youth within 12 months of their PRT.
The target population for the project was older youth who faced the most challenges to legal permanency, with many of them having a goal of another permanent planned living arrangement (APPLA). The rates of achieving legal permanency within 12 months for the 726 youth participating in the project ranged from 0 to 26 percent, with an overall rate of 8.5 percent. Most youth (61.6 percent) were still in care, 27 percent had otherwise exited State custody, and 2.9 percent had run away. The report notes that the results indicate that PRTs may not be effective with this population; however, jurisdictions reported that PRTs helped staff develop a greater awareness of the definition of legal permanency, the importance of permanency, and “thinking outside the box” to establish permanency options for youth.
New thinking on brain-science therapies could help foster kids
Therapies based on brain science – and limited use of antipsychotic medications – are the answer for thousands of foster kids whose traumatic childhoods have left them with depression and extreme aggression, according to a growing number of experts. Many children taking antipsychotic medications do not have psychosis but trauma-induced behavioral problems with symptoms that mimic mental illness, researchers and child advocates said.
Protective Factors Approaches in Child Welfare
This issue brief from the Child Welfare Information Gateway provides an overview of protective factors approaches to the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. It discusses the importance of a protective factors approach; outlines approaches from the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Administration for Children, Youth and Families (ACYF); and describes the literature review commissioned by the ACYF on protective factors for populations it serves. The brief also includes a section that maps connections across protective factors approaches within individual, relational, and social/community domains. Examples are provided of jurisdictions applying protective factors approaches, as well as additional resources. (February 2014)
Darla Henry: 3-5-7 Monthly Newsletter – April 2014 (see attachment)
1) Returning Home: Reconnecting with Our Childhoods Many of you have dedicated a day to driving youth to their old neighborhoods, former foster homes, and other significant places and so this resonates with us as we practice the 3-5-7 Model; 2) WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE! Our youth are always trying to express their needs to us– trying to get our attention so that we will respond to their need; 3) RESPONDING to our youth and families, we sometimes use a technique referred to as self-disclosure; 4) Forever Fingerprints (Cole Puckett and Sherrie Eldridge) – For adopted children, learning about their beginnings and how they understand what that means to them is a process. It doesn’t happen at one point in time, but rather throughout the experiences of life. In this heartwarming children’s book, Forever Fingerprints uses a common occurrence a relative’s pregnancy as a springboard for discussions on birthparents, where adopted children are before they are born, and how that makes one little girl feel about it; 5) Optimizing Home Visits – This month we’d like to explore a perceived barrier that is often raised-the dilemma of time (or better lack thereof). We often hear from you that you want to engage youth in 3-5-7 Model© work, but that you feel challenges to find the extra time to accomplish this.
National Foster Care Month Webinar Series: Building Blocks Toward Permanent Families
The Children’s Bureau, together with its information service, Child Welfare Information Gateway, recently announced that this year’s National Foster Care Month theme is “Building Blocks Toward Permanent Families”. As part of National Foster Care Month, the Children’s Bureau through the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections (NRCPFC, a service of the Children’s Bureau and member of the T/TA Network), is pleased to offer a free webinar series on achieving permanency for children and youth in foster care. Please visit the event page for each webinar for additional details. Registration is now open for webinars 1 and 2. Please note that you must register for each event separately.
Part 1: Integrated Systems Approach to Permanency-Focused Programs
Monday, May 12, 2014, 2:00-3:30 PM EDT
Part 2: Real Talk: Myths and Challenges in Permanency Work
Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 2:00-3:30 PM EDT