AECF and the Casey Center Collaborate with New England Adoption Program Managers to Enhance Systems Change
by Sarah B. Greenblatt and Barbara Dobbyn

With an increasing number of special needs children across New England reaching permanency through adoption, there is an urgent need for state, private and federal agencies to creatively address the array of family and systems’ needs which have emerged from this rapid growth. Additionally, as states are engaging in the federal Child and Family Service Reviews and developing their Program Improvement Plans, there is an even greater need for state sharing about practices that can support improvements in the quality and timeliness of permanency planning with families and children.

Recognizing the benefits of learning from peers, the Administration for Children and Families in Region I and the Casey Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice invited the New England Adoption Program Managers to participate in periodic networking and learning opportunities with colleagues from their respective states, the federal government and, over time, others as appropriate. Since June 2002, representatives from New England’s state adoption programs have met three times in the Lowell division of Casey Family Services. Connections are rekindled each time colleagues come together to informally address common issues and unique challenges.

Each state adoption program manager is invited to bring two or three staff members from their adoption programs – staff who have an adoption policy and/or practice focus. The initial goals for the collaborative included the following:

• To revive regional networking and learning meetings as a strategy to address emerging trends, issues and challenges in adoption policy and practice in New England;
• To share resources and explore solutions related to the increasingly complex special needs of New England’s adopted children and families, as well as children awaiting adoption;
• To identify and strengthen relationships among New England state contacts for inter-jurisdictional issues; and
• To determine interest in ongoing meetings and the desired results of those meetings.

The adoption program managers expressed interest in meeting three or four times a year to address group-identified issues for discussion and learning and to hear from their colleagues about state strategies and federal updates related to innovative permanency and adoption-related practices or policy initiatives.

Several themes have emerged for discussion and sharing including: opportunities to sup-port children’s and families’ transition from foster care to adoption; systemic implications of the growing population of children receiving adoption subsidies; funding of post-adoption services; and an initial exploration of state interest/support for a New England Post-Adoption Services Institute to share lessons learned from Maine’s IV-E Waiver as well as other approaches to these much-needed services. Adoption program managers also have used these meetings to share creative strategies for recruitment of resource families and the adoptive placements of challenging children and youth in need of permanent families.

State sharing of resources, ideas and mutual support has deepened as relationships among the participants have grown. A unique aspect of this developing networking and learning group is a focus on possible solutions to common challenges. For discussions about workable, individualized strategies for negotiating adoption subsidies that address adoptive children’s and families’ complex and often changing needs throughout the childhood of the adopted child. Discussions have included ways to strengthen the adoption competence of community mental health providers through training partnerships and lessons on crafting informative messages to increase public awareness of the benefits of adoption and post-adoption assistance. Managers have found that they come to these meetings, which offer innovative programs and experiences, and leave with new ideas and inspirations gleaned from their colleagues. And even more so, the meetings have provided a platform for specialized professionals to reach across states in the New England region to engage their counterparts in strategies for solving both case-level and systemic problems they face each day.

Future meetings will explore funding and sustaining adoption-competent services and supports at the community level. The Casey Center has been working on two post-adoption services white papers, one exploring creative funding strategies for post-adoption services and the other describing promising practices in adoption-competent mental health services. Adoption program managers have suggested expanding one of their meetings to include child welfare directors and revenue enhancement staff to discuss how these creative funding and service strategies could advance the post-adoption services agenda within their states.

Believing that more can be accomplished with the resources of many than any one entity can accomplish alone, Region I and Casey Family Services are pleased to be able to support this networking and learning opportunity to advance more meaningful permanency planning and adoption practices for children in foster care.

Sarah B. Greenblatt, ACSW, is the Director of the Casey Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice at Casey Family Services, 127 Church Street, New Haven, CT 06510. She may be reached at sgreenblatt@caseyfamilyservices.org. Barbara Dobbyn previously worked for Region I Administration for Children and Families in Boston, MA.

Reprinted with permission from Common Ground, a publication of the New England Association of Child Welfare Commissioners and Directors.

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