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Connections Count
Resources Connecting Foster Teens with Families for Life
From the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Casey Family Services
In this Issue:
Making It PossibleYouth & Family Perspectives
In Depth
Data Snapshots
What Do You Think?
About Enewsletter
Making It
Possible
Need strategies to involve birth families in your state CFSR? New tools can help.
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
In Depth
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). |
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.
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.
Data Snapshots
Ties with birth families—however complicated—are important to older youth in care, two different studies say.What Do You Think?
Which family search practice are you employing to help increase youth permanence?About Connections Count
Produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Casey Family Services, Connections Count is an electronic newsletter focusing on best practices information, tools, research, and data emerging on youth permanence in child welfare.Contact Us
Casey Family Services127 Church Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Tel: 203.401.6900
Fax: 203.401.6901