Massachusetts Division Director |
Meme Wheeler
With her distinctive manner – calm and energetic, knowledgeable and open – it is not surprising that Meme Wheeler has helped hundreds of children and families for more than 20 years. After 13 years with Casey Family Services in New Hampshire, she became director of the Massachusetts Division in 2010.
How did you learn about Casey Family Services?
I was working for the Department of Children and Youth Services in New Hampshire. Casey’s reputation was really fantastic. We used to say when you placed a child with Casey it was like getting your child into the Ivy League.
What brought you to Massachusetts?
It’s not very often that a director position comes up and my intent – and my dream – is to stay with Casey Family Services, so I applied for a position that afforded me a long-term opportunity. I’m excited about being a director and helping our division go through changes. It’s a challenge but it’s also exciting and rewarding!
How would you describe the Massachusetts Division?
Like all of Casey Family Services, the Massachusetts Division is all about family, bringing our interventions to scale, and developing evidence-based practices. We have to make sure we bring those three elements into all our work and that every child we work with reaches permanence on a timely basis.
Can you describe what incorporating family, scale and evidence-based practice looks like?
For example, now we are working with the Massachusetts Division of Children and Families on an Intensive Family Preservation program in which our staff provides clinical case management for families requiring preservation and reunification supports. We are using a short-term model that integrates Homebuilders and our Lifelong Families model.
Is permanence a part of that work?
Absolutely. We incorporate the permanency teaming model used by our foster care staff in working with families on reunification and preservation. However, it looks different because the cases are three months maximum, and there is already a kind of permanence because the kids are living at home, however tenuously.
What has been the impact of permanency teams?
Permanency teams have led to very positive outcomes for the kids. Not only in achieving permanence, but in the skills they develop through the process. As part of the team, foster youth are involved in decision making and planning for the future. Also, the kids spend less time in foster care. Since both the state and Casey have a shared mission to facilitate legal permanence for kids in care, teaming has been a good parallel process for us both.
What is the division’s top priority?
We have a really great core group of foster parents, but we need more families. We are so happy that we just recruited seven new families. But already I’m thinking about more because you want to have a pool of foster parents who are ready when a child needs a family.
What is the biggest obstacle to recruitment?
A big obstacle in Massachusetts – and many other states – is the criminal background check. It takes so much time to process and we can’t place a child until the foster parent is fully licensed. We need to figure out if there is something we can do to alleviate this bureaucratic problem.
How has the experience of being a foster child changed over your career?
Because we are so focused on permanence, kids are making connections while they are in care. If they are in foster care, we do a family search; if the foster family is unable to adopt, we look valiantly to find an adoptive family. The kids are much more involved. They are at the meetings, they know what’s going on, and they’re part of the planning.
They also are not in foster care for so long. The social worker is now a bridge between the child and the family, but he or she is not the child’s friend or family member. It’s a close relationship but a professional one. And that’s a big shift from Casey’s former long-term care model.
How does your experience as a social worker, family service worker, and team leader inform your work as a director?
It has been a progression because I started off as a long-term foster care social worker. The children and the families were like families to us because we worked with them for years. When the focus started on permanency, kids were spending less time in foster care, which is a good thing. It was great to be in on the ground floor of that transition and to see a progression of practice that has clearly been in the best interest of the child and family.