Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.

Pathways to Family

All children need and deserve a family for a lifetime. In addition to protecting children and keeping them safe, child welfare agencies also are charged with connecting those in care to permanent families. Traditionally, however, agencies have not been as successful in finding families for teens as they have for younger children, often due to false and harmful assumptions that people do not adopt teens or that teens don’t want or are not ready for families.

Casey Family Services is different. Casey is dedicated to finding lifelong families for all children and youth in foster care.

Social workers call this “permanency practice.” When a child “achieves permanence,” it means he or she is no longer in foster care, because the youngster has been reunified with their birth parents or relative caregivers, or have an adoptive family or legal guardian, which may sometimes be a relative.

If you’re a prospective foster parent, don’t let the emphasis on lifelong family intimidate you. Casey does not require foster parents to become lifelong families for any child placed in their home, but if you decide to fill that role, Casey will help you. However, if adoption is not your goal, Casey still needs you to help us get youth back home or connected to another permanent family.

Types of family permanence include:

Family Reunification: When birth parents address the issues that caused them to lose custody, the state agency may return the child to their family of origin. Reunification is the preferred permanency option for children when it is safe for the child to return home. Foster parents might be asked to help children as they prepare for a return to their birth parents. Once a birth parent loses parental rights through the courts, family reunification is no longer possible, yet the child’s continued relationships with their family are often important.

Kinship Care: Because family relationships are so fundamental to children, state agencies may connect a youngster with an extended family member, often a grandparent. Sometimes the relative becomes a foster parent while reunification with birth parents is attempted, or serves as an adoptive parent or legal guardian for a relative child.

Legal Guardianship: When a birth parent’s rights are not terminated, but the child is unable to return home, the state might transfer custody to a legal guardian outside the foster care system. A legal guardian typically is a relative, though unrelated foster parents and family friends can be guardians, too. Many states require family members who want to become legal guardians to relative children in the care to become foster parents first.

Adoption: When the court terminates parental rights, a youth is considered “free for adoption.” Sometimes a foster family or someone close to the child will decide to adopt the youth. Once the adoption is finalized, the child is no longer in foster care and the adoptive parent is the legal parent. Many states require people interested in adopting youth from foster care to become foster parents first.

Learn More

• Download the Fostering and Adopting with Casey Family Services brochure (PDF).
• Download the Fostering and Adopting with Casey Family Services brochure in Spanish (PDF).
• Request information on fostering and adopting with Casey Family Services