Connections Count

In This Issue:

Making It Possible

Need strategies to involve birth families in your state CFSR? New tools can help.

Resources and Tools

Two new resources related to dads as permanency resources: What about the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and Involve Nonresident Fathers (PDF) and Fatherhood.gov, the new federal clearinghouse with sections for researchers and policymakers.

Questions about kinship care among social workers, policymakers, state legislators, or community partners? See Is Kinship Care Good for Kids? (PDF)

Youth and Family Perspectives

“Kayla is like a complicated plant. She has roots with us— her adoptive family—and roots with her birth family. To be healthy as an adult, the more support she has in place, the better.”

Donna Coraluzzo, foster parent

Birth Family Connections for Youth in Foster Care

After TPR: Birth Parents as Family Resources

Practitioners and policymakers are recognizing the benefits of birth family reconnections with foster youth, even when a return home is not possible. Some states and localities are taking this a step further by exploring the reunification of older adolescents with their birth parents, despite the termination of parental rights (TPR).

read more >

Sustaining Birth Family Connections Post Adoption

Policy and practice has begun to recognize the long-established family ties and relationships of youth in foster care. Some social workers have been championing the importance of helping young people understand where and how they belong. The benefits of this work are substantial. Understanding their families can help youth form racial and individual identity, reduce loyalty conflicts between birth and adoptive families, and maintain cultural and family traditions.

read more >

Family Search: Reconnecting Youth in Foster Care to Family

Being in foster care can sever relationships between youth and the people important to them, including family members and caring adults. Rather than assume that youth who have languished in foster care do not have “family,” child welfare systems across the country are using family search practices. The goal: to identify family members and engage them in case planning with the youth, as well as explore the possibility of establishing meaningful and lasting relationships.

read more >

State Spotlight

Ties with birth families—however complicated—are important to older youth in care, two different studies say.

About Connections Count

Produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Casey Family Services, Connections Count is an electronic newsletter focusing on best practices, tools, research, and data on youth permanence in child welfare.

Contact Us

Casey Family Services
127 Church Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Tel: 203.401.6900
Fax: 203.401.6901

email us>

Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.