MY THREE-FOLD MODEL

Consulting services grounded in a best practice model for child welfare

Preserve Restore Grow

Grow.

The Need

Sometimes children are not able to be reunified and they need another permanent family. Many children wait for years to be connected with a forever family, particularly older children. National data indicates there are 71,254 children and youth who are legally free for adoption but are still waiting for a permanent home. And in 2018, nearly 18,000 youth were discharged from foster care without a permanent family.*

The Solution

Relatives and fictive kin connections are sought out immediately when children come into foster care and searches continue so that all available resources for a child can be considered for permanency. The focus is on growing, rather than replacing, the child’s attachments. Open adoption/guardianship and permanent relationships that support continued connections to biological family are prioritized.

Exhaustive efforts are made toward counseling families in making decisions that support the best outcome for the child. Rather than terminating relationships for a child, the emphasis is on growing a child’s sense of family by redefining roles, creating safe connections, and nurturing new attachments.

I believe systems that grow families support the following best practices:

A child’s key attachments and family connections are explored at the onset of placement and continually considered in the context of permanency planning by the agency and the court.

Placement of siblings together in a permanent home is prioritized and exhaustive efforts are made to ensure this.

If a termination of parental rights must be pursued to legally free a child for adoption or guardianship, the parent-child relationship is safely nurtured and maintained, whenever that serves the child.

Efforts are made to safely reconnect children/youth with parents and relatives if those relationships were unnecessarily severed or those connections were never preserved.

Specialized training for youth workers and peer mentoring for older youth are implemented to support meaningful engagement and effective case planning.

Lifelong connections are developed for all waiting youth and they receive support in developing healthy relational skills.

Foster and adoptive parents are trained to understand the impact of trauma and attachment and are expected to support a child’s healthy relationships with family members and fictive kin.

Aggressive child-specific recruitment occurs for all waiting children and youth and includes exploring existing connections.

Clinical Supervision supports a timely, child-specific approach to permanency planning that protects the child’s attachments and sense of family.

Quality Assurance measures and processes are in place to evaluate court and agency efforts toward supporting a child’s attachments while pursuing permanency.

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Let’s work together to grow families for all children and youth.

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