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From Inspiration to Action: Teams Plan for Youth Permanence

In the five months since May’s 2008 National Convening on Youth Permanence, counties, states, and tribes have been hard at work elaborating upon, refining, or building consensus for youth permanency plans made at the Convening.

In December and in the months that follow, Connections Count will report on advances in policy and practice in specific locations. In this issue, we set the stage by examining themes that struck a chord with Convening participants in Washington, D.C.

Teams form, set priorities

County, state, and tribal child welfare systems sent teams of up to six people to the Convening, bringing together young people, parents, extended family, foster parents, judges, legislators, child welfare directors, social workers, and others. The goal: to engage in peer learning on promising youth permanency programs, practices, and policies, and to use what was learned to design system-specific plans to connect more young people with families.

Participants drew up concrete plans for making youth permanence a priority in their locality. “Getting the team to work together on the same page” was a major benefit of the planning process, said one participant.

One attendee said, “We have a lot of work to do [as a state].” He listed his personal post-Convening priorities: “Assess all the kids with a goal of Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA), [ask] why kids were [first] placed into foster care, and [create] ongoing connections with kin. Then … educate staff and stakeholders on the cultural shift in working with teens.”

Themes were apparent among the more than 40 plans created during the Convening. Among them:

• Young people must be much more involved in their planning.
• Promising practices must be implemented.
• Agencies must be able to use data to describe their strides toward connecting teens with families.
• Agencies and tribes must refashion relationships with the courts to focus on the urgent need for youth permanence.

Involving Youth

"Youth partnerships are our overarching goal." – Southwestern state

Convening participants were moved deeply by meeting, hearing from, and speaking with, young people in foster care. That emotion was reflected in many team plans. Jurisdictions planned to increase youth involvement in their cases and on permanency teams. A number of plans committed to increase the involvement of youth in advocacy and systems change. Plans listed hiring youth advocates system wide, involving youth in staff training, and planning youth-centered local permanency Convenings.

"We need more youth voices in policy work," a Midwestern team indicated. "We will hold our first annual youth conference," promised one Southern team.

Permanency Practice: Pressure for Improvement

Practice improvement was the focus of many team plans. Several plans targeted youth whose need for family had not been met, especially young people in residential care, youth with "independent living" or APPLA goals, youth of color, and older youth. "We will divert youth away from the goal of APPLA in the future and re-evaluate cases with a current goal of APPLA," wrote an East Coast team.

Some teams planned to broaden the definition of permanence to meet the needs of individual youth and to respect cultural heritages. "We will define our terms: What is permanence for the tribe and for our young people?" noted a tribal plan.

Many teams focused on strengthening practice with birth parents, kin, and foster families to engage them more fully as permanency resources. Several identified the need to expand family-finding activities, and focused on giving more attention to sibling relationships. "We will more deeply connect with birth families, especially fathers," indicated a Mid-Atlantic team. "We will revisit biological parents and relatives as permanency resources," wrote a team from the Southwest.

Changing Agency Culture, Building Capacity

Several plans focused on changing agency culture to connect more youth with families. For some, that meant better data gathering and analysis. For others, it meant integrating permanency and preparation for adulthood services. "We will create a culture that encourages and supports youth in a positive, strengths-based environment," read one Southwestern state plan. "We will pull together facts and data on our state foster care as it relates to permanence and disproportionality," wrote a team from the South.

Improving Policy and Court Relationships

Infusing child welfare law and policy with permanency values was essential to several jurisdictions. Many specified formulating legislative changes to increase the number of teens with permanence; some planned legal measures that would allow reversing terminations of parental rights.

Of course, connecting more young people with families can’t happen without the courts, which were the focus of brainstorming by many county, state, and tribal teams. The teams – many of which included court personnel – identified an array of priorities, such as enhancing youth participation in their court hearings and strengthening the role of Court Appointed Special Advocates and Guardians Ad Litem in permanency hearings.

Several teams would increase court training on youth permanence; some specified that youth should be court trainers. Having tribes provide technical assistance to the courts on the Indian Child Welfare Act was listed on some team plans. Others identified the need for joint strategy meetings and data sharing between child welfare systems and the courts. Still others listed as priorities working with court task forces and developing court procedures to enhance youth permanence, including permanency hearings for youth in foster care beyond age 18.

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