Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.

Family Permanence

All children need a safe, nurturing family to protect and guide them, but not all children in our nation have this support. More than 460,000 children are in the foster care system, most placed temporarily as a result of parental abuse or neglect. Although abuse and neglect occur at the same rate in all racial or ethnic groups, youth who enter foster care are disproportionately children and youth of color. Each year, an estimated 30,000 children in care exit the system after age 18 without a lasting family connection and at risk for considerable hardships.

Within the child welfare field, permanence means that a child will exit foster care, or be diverted from entry, by having a family that:

• is safe and meant to last a lifetime;
• offers the legal rights and social status of full family membership;
• provides for physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and spiritual needs; and
• assures lifelong connections to extended family, siblings, other significant adults, family history and traditions, race and ethnic heritage, culture, religion, and language.

Casey Family Services today offers a continuum of permanency-focused services for children and youth, including preservation, reunification, foster care, adoption, and post-permanency services. In addition, Casey has established a number of specialized community-based programs to help strengthen families and enable parents to provide the healthy, nurturing environments their children need to grow and thrive.

Central to our permanency practice is the Permanency Teaming Process, a collaborative approach used to achieve lifelong family connections and prepare children for adulthood.

Casey’s approach exemplifies a basic belief that children do better when their families are strong, and families do better when they live in supportive communities that help them to succeed.