Family Support

Family Reunification Services
Family Reunification Services attempt to reunite children in out-of-home care with their birth families or extended families of origin. Children eligible for reunification are referred to Casey Family Services from state foster homes or residential treatment facilities with a permanency plan that calls for reunification. Casey Family Services provides home-based services and support to the reunifying families before, during and after the children's return, thus ensuring their safety and the family's stability.

Family Preservation Services
Family Preservation Services offer family-centered, home-based counseling and support to help struggling families remain intact, thereby preventing the need for out-of-home placements. Casey Family Services works closely with community organizations such as hospitals, schools, and local service agencies that identify families experiencing extreme pressures.

Family Resource Centers
Casey Family Services recognizes the importance of community networks in providing all the services and supports fragile families need. Since 1999, we have steadily expanded our work to help build and enhance these networks through community-based family resource centers.

The first of several similar initiatives across New England and in Baltimore, Maryland--The Family Resource Services Program for the Lowell (Massachusetts) Housing Authority (LHA)--was launched in 1998 to provide support for families and children living within two housing projects, North Common Village and the George Flanagan Development. Through a contract with the LHA, Casey Family Services is providing a growing, multi-faceted program for children and families through a family resource center in each complex, activities for children during out-of-school time, and home visits, as well as family advocacy and support.

This program will enhance its community outreach and actively assist other Casey Divisions in building similar programs. For example, in 2001, the New Hampshire Division opened a family resource center in Franklin to serve rural, low-income children and families in a middle school setting. The Baltimore Division has established a plan to begin a family resource center program in its new facility at 25 North Central Street.

Family Advocacy and Support
Family Advocacy and Support has been designed in conjunction with Vermont's Department of Social Services to provide a single point of access for families in poverty who are seeking to resolve child development and neglect issues. Based at the Waterbury office of Casey Family Services' Vermont Division, this program strives to integrate service delivery, incorporate the values and assets of the community and maximize family strengths. The program was launched in 1996.

Family Connections
As medical advances have enabled victims of HIV/AIDS to live longer, they also have heightened the need for assistance to these families in coping with the everyday ravages of the disease and the inevitable and considerable stress on their children. Targeting families affected by HIV/AIDS, this program provides the opportunity and support parents need to provide a stable home environment for their children and to plan for their children's care in the future. Without such planning, arrangements for permanence are often made only after a parent dies, at the very time when the child is grief-stricken, confused, afraid and least able to cope.

Based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Family Connections promotes innovative activities that help strengthen relationships between parents, future guardians and children, thus easing the transition from birth parent into guardian care. The program also seeks to inform and influence the public policy debates surrounding HIV/AIDS. In 2001, this program will expand its outreach to the community at large, adding new programs and services and increasing its engagement in families and neighborhoods.

Teen Parents and Young Families
The Teen Parent and Young Families program is located in Maryland's Historic East Baltimore neighborhood, where it is helping to develop a collaborative network of community-based services to assist adolescents and young parents. Current services, including family advocacy and support, crisis intervention, case management, emergency response, short-term counseling, and intensive family preservation services, are designed to help disadvantaged, single teen parents cope with the myriad problems that confront them, and avoid out-of-home placement for their children. New activities will include the creation of a foster care program, child care for the neighborhood and increased programming for young fathers.

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