940: Concurrent Planning for Resource Parents

1. 940: Concurrent Planning for Resource Parents

2. Learning Objectives Participants will be able to: • Define concurrent planning and its value • Identify the eight core components of concurrent planning and how the role of resource parent fits into each component

3. Competencies • 940-1 The foster parent understands their role as a part of the Child Welfare team to empower, strengthen, and preserve the families of children in foster care and understands how they can be a supportive resource to the family of origin. • 910-2The foster parent has a thorough understanding of foster care, the reasons for placement and the importance of reuniting families. • 914-4 The foster parent knows ways to work with and help families of origin, can contribute to the case planning process and can implement activities to support reunification.

4. Basic Permanency Assumptions • Children have a right and need to live and develop within safe, secure, and permanent families. • Children have a right to live with parents/caregivers whom they can love, trust, and depend upon. • Separation for extended periods of time may result in tremendous psychological and developmental disruption. • A child's perception and experience of time are determined by his level of cognitive developmental maturity.

5. What is Concurrent Planning? Concurrent Planning is a process of working towards one legal permanency goal (typically reunification) while at the same time establishing and implementing an alternative permanency goal and plan that are worked on concurrently to move children/youth more quickly to a safe and stable permanent family. (Permanency Roundtable Project, 2010)

6. Goals of Concurrent Planning • To promote the safety, permanency and well-being of children and youth in out-of-home care; • To achieve timely permanency for children and youth through early permanency decisions; • To reduce the number of moves in the foster care system for children; and • To engage families and relatives early and foster significant relationships between children in out-of-home care and their family/kin.

7. Who Gets a Concurrent Plan? Effective July 1, 2015 all children entering foster care with a goal of reunification will have a concurrent plan for permanency established within 90 days of their placement; and Effective January 1, 2016 all children who were already in out-of-home care will have a concurrent plan for permanency, regardless of their court-ordered permanency goal.

8. Don’t Let Ideas Get Away!

9. Eight Core Components of Concurrent Planning • Full disclosure to all participants in the case planning process • Family search and engagement • Family Group Decision Making/Family Group Conferencing/Teaming • Child/family visitation • Establishment of clear timelines for permanency decisions • Transparent written agreements and documentation • Committed collaboration • Specific recruitment, training and retention of resource parents

10. Family Group Decision Making/Family Group Conferencing • Family-focused, culturally sensitive approach to planning • Involves meeting with immediate and extended family members and any parties important in child’s/family’s life • Family is “in charge” and responsible for identifying attendees and creating the plan • Private family time is part of the meeting

11. Visitation: What Does the Research Tell Us? Visitation: • Is the single most important factor in maintaining the relationship between the child and the parents; • Enhances the child’s emotional well-being; • Improves parent’s positive feelings about the placement; • Decreases parents’ worries about their children; and • Is associated with achieving permanency and decreasing time in care. (Hess, P.M.1999)

12. What is Collaboration? A process to reach goals that cannot be achieved by one single agent. It includes the following components: • Jointly developing and agreeing on a set of common goals and directions; • Sharing responsibility for obtaining those goals; • Working together to achieve those goals, using the expertise and resources of each collaborator. (National Summer Learning Association, 2013)

13. What does Collaboration Look Like? • It involves exchanging information, altering activities, sharing resources and enhancing each other’s capacity for mutual benefit and to achieve a common goal. The qualitative difference between cooperating and collaborating is that in collaborating, organizations and individuals are willing to learn from each other to become better at what they do. Collaborating involves sharing risks, responsibilities and rewards. It requires a substantial time commitment, very high level of trust, and sharing turf. (Adapted with permission from National Summer Learning Association)

14. Bridging the Gap: Families Working Together Video (DVD) from: National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections, September 16, 2009 Used with permission

15. Specific Recruitment, Training, and Retention Take 5 minutes to reflect on the following questions: • What parts of teaming and collaborating do I feel comfortable with? • What parts of teaming and collaborating do I feel uncomfortable with? • Can I commit to teaming and collaborating even if I feel uncomfortable with some parts of it? • Can I commit to helping children in my care reunify with their birth parents and at the same time commit to being a permanent resource for the child(ren) if they are unable to return home?

16. Full Disclosure • Discussion with Resource Parents should include: • Circumstances that led to child’s removal from home • Child’s needs • Foster care is temporary • Timelines for permanency planning • Primary goal and concurrent goal • Requirement for county agency to search for relatives • Licensing and training requirements • Rights and responsibilities • Needs of the resource family and services to provide support

17. Family Search and Engagement • Relative – to the 5th degree of blood, marriage, or adoption • Kin – God-parent, tribe member, any individual with a significant, positive relationship with child or family • Important to establish and maintain connections

18. Clear Timelines • According to the concurrent planning bulletin, “permanency should be achieved for a child within 12 months of out-of-home placement.” • ASFA – if permanency not achieved for child who has been in out-of-home care for the last 15 of most recent 22 months, petition is filed to terminate parental rights and identify permanent family for child

19. Transparent Written Agreements and Documentation • Resource parents should actively participate in the development and review of the Child Permanency Plan • Resource parents roles, responsibilities, and activities should be defined on the Child Permanency Plan • Resource parents should receive copies of the plans

20. Don’t Let Ideas Get Away!