The Journey To Kinship Care and Kinship Service within Brant CAS

1. The Journey To Kinship Care and Kinship Service within Brant CAS

2. The Guidlelines for Alternative Care of Children authored by the United Nations (2009) states: “Alternative Care may be “kinship care family based care within the child’s extended family or with close relatives or with close friends of the family, known to the child, whether formal or informal in nature” (section III)” The Brant CAS has successfully incorporated these transformation initiatives: Currently: • 36 kinship in care arrangements • 46 kinship service arrangements • 133 traditional foster families Since 2004: • We have serviced between 45 and 63 kinship in care families annually

3. Case Management: • Kinship in care files are managed within our Resource Development Unit • The vast majority of our kinship service files are managed within the community team responsible for the linked family service file • Experience shows that the maternal family is most often involved in providing kinship care

4. Our Beginnings • In the early 2000’s Brant began our journey towards kinship care and service • In part due to the huge influx of children into care post the 1999 amendments to the CFSA and the resulting stressors on our traditional foster care system • Provisional homes grew from episodic to full caseload

5. We opened some homes because that was the only place the child would stay • We opened other homes because our traditional system was not meeting the needs of the child Challenges Within the Field: • We needed to confront our biases and the bias of the field • Workers were often hesitant to consider family/kin • Traditional thinking : • “an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree “ • We began to recognize that while we looked to family for necessity – in fact we began to learn many valuable lessons

6. Tragedies such as Jeffery Baldwin’s death in care of his maternal grandparents while supervised by CCAS in Toronto highlighted a need to understand the complex issues related to kinship caregiving • Our thinking began to change to: • “one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole basket.” • Within our agency we began to consider - could we understand the journey of the kinship care applicant through the child welfare system and mitigate risks and articulate strengths and growth and benefits to the child

7. We had to endure the questioning of community and partners who wondered what possessed us to approve that couple and others as a foster home • We learned from experience that kin offered something different, unique, and sustaining to our children requiring out of home placements • The placements were longer lasting than the traditional foster care • American research in 2007 identified that: • 82% of children in kinship homes remained in their placements after one year compared to 65% of children in traditional foster care.(Rock& Testa)

8. Australian researchers noted that: • Children who experienced a breakdown in placement in the first four months of foster care went on to become members of the “serially evicted” (frequent flyers) children likely to face a significant number of moves or disruptions. (Barber & Dafoe 2006) • We identified that the provisional homes likely had stressors in the areas of: • Employment • Income • Housing • These stressors were exacerbated by the unexpected addition of a child or children • Trust was also a challenge as it wasn’t unusual that the family may have had previous contact with the agency

9. Divided loyalties were also an issue • “I am the Grandmother and will protect the children, I am also her/his mother and want her/himto recover “ • We needed to recognize that saying family and payment in the same sentence was acceptable • Bias held within the field was that family should not have to be paid to care for family • Research in the field began to support our experiences • Kinship placements offer children greater opportunity for continuity and stability than foster homes or group homes ( Gambrill & Patterson 2002)

10. Kinship placements have greater longevity than foster care situations, kinship homes are more likely to accept sibling groups and sustain those relationships, and most children and parents would prefer that children live with family members or friends than with strangers. ( Barth, Guo, Green and McCrae 2007) • Proclamation of Bill 210 in late 2006 provided structure to both kinship service and kinship care within the continuum of services available to children and their families. • However, while kinship care families were supported by perdiemsand entitlements to children, kinship service received onlyepisodic, unsustainable support

11. Challenges & Ongoing Learning & Development • Kinship service families require the same ongoing support as kinship care families to navigate the system they are enveloped in, by virtue of stepping forward to assist when a crisis occurs requiring placement • Kinship families have taught us to understand their experience of the social work definition of permanency; • Adoption is not always palatable to them • Adoption means their child, their sibling will never recover • By listening to families we can weave a fabric of permanency around the child creatively outside the forever solution of adoption

12. Kinship Families: • When the child is initially in care, struggle when the long term solution is out of care • Without ongoing financial support the kin families are placed in a position of needing to make decisions related to finances when considering if they can provide long term care • Workers have had to consider bringing a child into care to meet the financial needs of the caregivers…and maintain the placement stability…all contrary to the spirit of the legislation permitting kinship solutions for children in need of placements

13. Kinship families frequently enter our system being part of a short term solution • Experience is teaching us that the short term transitions to long term and families are being asked to consider: • Adoption, • Custody • Post secondary education expenses • If they can support the child and meet his/her needs through to adulthood, needs that frequently require counseling, and other therapeutic interventions …frequently large ticket items financially and emotionally

14. Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children authored by United nations states: “financial and material poverty or conditions directly and uniquely imputable to such poverty , should never be the only justification for removing a child from parental care, for receiving a child into alternative care or for preventing his/her reintegration, but should be seen as a signal for the need to provide appropriate support to the family”

15. Planning for Our Crown Wards: • Looking to the family and extended family via Family Group Decision Making • Logical linkage between kinship care and transition planning for youth in care

16. PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) • Implementation of PRIDE in 2007 has brought kinship care, adoptive and foster care applicants together for training • The PRIDE curriculum is provided by representatives from all three areas • Adoptive and foster care applicants have commented that the kinship care families deserve respect as their role is complicated and more difficult than families who do not have a prior connection with the birth family

17. SAFE (Structured Assessment Family Evaluation) • It is a challenge to get kinship families to commit to attending PRIDE due in large part to the significant demands on their time meeting needs of children already placed…. • SAFE - implemented in 2006 strength based, linked to LAC & PRIDE • Articulates the mitigation of risk and ability to change and resiliency of these applicants

18. Closing and Future • Currently we are meeting with kinship care and kinship service families to assist us to develop mechanisms to better prepare them for the “cycle of kin” • Developing a tool for workers to offer at the first contact: • Getting families to know where their journey may take them • To assist workers to more fully understand the complex journey of kin children