Last month we observed National Child Abuse Prevention Month. We focused on making meaningful connections as a way to reduce instances of child maltreatment, for such connections strengthen bonds between not only individuals, but also among families and communities. Meaningful connections build support networks for children and families while reinforcing a sense of communal responsibility for the well-being of others.
May 1 brings us into National Foster Care Month. We begin this month having focused on making meaningful connections in order to bring about impactful change concerning child abuse prevention. As the theme this year is Building Blocks Toward Permanent Families, we can actually apply the concept from last month to the theme for this month. Making meaningful connections is not only important for preventing child abuse, but also for finding permanency for the nearly 400,000 children and youth in foster care. Indeed, this is one of the resource areas on the National Foster Care Month 2014 website.
- Engaging families in case planning
- Enriching caseworker and family visits
- Supporting families and caregivers through services
- Enhancing well-being for children, youth, and families
- Strengthening families through permanence
Promoting Permanency in Minnesota
Engaging Families
Minnesota has taken steps toward increasing permanency for children in out-of-home care. Minnesota state policy authorizes the use of family group decision-making at any stage of child protection proceedings (subject to approval by the court), and the MN Department of Human Services encourages this practice as well.
Enriching Visits
One of the resources found on the National Foster Care Month website is from MN DHS itself. It is a video on how caseworker visits can be used to prepare older youth for adulthood.
Supporting Through Services
Last year Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed into law Northstar Care for Children, which will go into effect January 1, 2015. This program reforms Minnesota’s current benefit structure for foster care payments, adoption assistance, and relative custody assistance (which will be known as Northstar kinship assistance in the future), with the goal of improving permanency outcomes for children and youth in foster care. By equalizing monthly benefits across all three programs, the State aims to remove a barrier to permanency for children and youth in foster care, thus reducing the number of children in out-of-home care as well as the time they spend in out-of-home care. At the same time, the percentage of children finding permanency through adoption or transfer of permanent legal and physical custody would likely increase.
CASCW also has a certificate program in place for child welfare and mental health professionals to increase their competency surrounding permanency and adoption. Learn more about the Permanency and Adoption Competency Certificate program.
Building Connections
At CASCW, we developed a tool to help child welfare professionals measure the relational permanence of youth in foster care. The Youth Connections Scale can be used at the time of intake in order to guide the case planning process around strengthening youth connections to caring adults. Ongoing use of the tool can also help identify specific adults who may support the youth in his or her path to permanence.
Enhancing Well-Being
CASCW’s recent CW360°, Attending to Well-Being in Child Welfare, and our upcoming conference on this same topic both draw attention to the importance of paying attention to child well-being. Areas in which Minnesota has worked to enhance child well-being are through the State’s quick implementation of extended foster care (which allows youth in foster care to remain in care until age 21), the formation of the Educational Stability Task Force, and MN DHS’s focus on trauma-informed care in child welfare practice.
Strengthening Families Through Permanence
In addition to Northstar Care for Children, Minnesota has also enacted other policies that strengthen families through permanence. Minnesota has in place laws that require concurrent permanency planning, and the preferred permanency outcome in Minnesota is family reunification.
A recent policy change concerns permanency progress review hearings. Previously, permanency progress review hearings were required every 6 months for children aged 8 and under; last year, Minnesota combined all age groups so that all children receive permanency progress review hearings every 6 months.
Also last year, Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law the Family Reunification Act, which allows (under very specific circumstances) parents whose rights had been terminated to petition the court for reinstatement of a legal parent-child relationship. The intent behind this law is to provide permanency for children who would otherwise age out of foster care.