Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.

Doreen Chapman

Doreen Chapman brings a longtime commitment to children and youth in foster care to her role as director of the Casey Family Services Maryland Division. Prior to joining Casey, she served as the vice president of permanency and family stabilization services at the Village for Families and Children in Hartford, Connecticut. She also held positions with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, concluding with her position as the statewide director of foster care and adoption services. Additionally, Chapman worked as a consultant with Deloitte & Touche Consulting, where she helped to develop a state automated child welfare information system for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.

What brought you to Casey?

My relationship with Casey began during my tenure at the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, where I worked on several initiatives with Casey’s Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice as a state partner. I also collaborated with the Hartford and Bridgeport divisions on areas pertaining to permanence.

I always have admired Casey’s focus aimed at strengthening children and families and on pioneering promising best practices at the regional and national level. When the opportunity to work for Casey arose, I felt that it would be an invaluable experience working for an organization whose vision of permanence and family connections mirrored my own.

The percentage of Baltimore residents who are high school dropouts, unemployed, and living in poverty is much higher compared with state or national averages. How does the division address those issues to reduce the number of families whose children are at risk of entering foster care?

The Maryland Division was first established as a family resource center aimed at working with young families to reduce barriers that put them and their children at risk. We provide pre-GED and GED classes, ESOL classes, and computer classes. In addition, we offer several groups, i.e.; anger management, nurturing families utilizing evidenced-based curricula. We continue to offer community-based case management services to help strengthen young families, where we conduct home visits, provide advocacy services, and work to connect clients with needed community services.

The division established a new program in 2008 to keep teen parents and their babies together as they live with foster and adoptive families. What are the program’s core components, and what impact has it had on the young parents?

The Permanency Teaming Process is at the center of the work that we do with the young mothers in our foster care program. Permanency teams facilitate connections with family and other important adults and prepare the young mothers for the responsibilities of adulthood while providing support and cultivating lifelong connections.

Foster parents receiving specific training on how to help young parents care for their children, as well as a financial component that teaches the young mothers how to budget stipends they receive to cover the costs of child supplies, child care, and everyday necessities.

The Maryland Division started as a community center in East Baltimore. What impact has the addition of more child welfare-focused services, such as Parent-Child Foster Care Services, had on the division’s work?

These new services have refocused the division around child welfare. Staff has become more cognizant of the challenges and barriers facing participants that could lead to child welfare involvement as well as those participants who are involved with DSS. Our Parent-Child Foster Care Services has been providing services to several of the fathers of the infants as well as providing services to biological family members of our young mothers. Our goal is to provide support for individuals on a young parent’s permanency team. Our family resource center, with its various programs, is an ideal vehicle to achieve this goal.

As you look at the field, do you see lifelong families for youth in foster care becoming a priority for practitioners?

Absolutely. It is my belief that permanence should have always been a natural part of the work done by practitioners in the field of child welfare. I’m proud to be part of an organization that is advancing that agenda. When you look at the disparate the outcomes of children exiting foster care with no connections, it seems obvious that practitioners need to put permanence at the top of their agenda.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has made a long-term commitment to Baltimore’s communities. How does the work of the division complement the Foundation’s investment?

Throughout Baltimore and across the country, the Foundation helps to identify, implement, and sustain best practices within its system reform work – everything Jim Casey aspired to do to help vulnerable children and families. The division simply mirrors that vision, providing young parents with the tools and skills necessary to break the cycle of child welfare, and supporting residents to become financially secure and contributing members of those communities that the Foundation has invested in and other communities as well.