Community support for foster and kinship families, social workers and biological families during foster care has the dual benefit of improving outcomes for children and reducing the shortage of foster families.
[Editor’s Note: This National Foster Care Month, we are looking at the state of foster care through three lenses – before, during and beyond – to assess what strategic actions make an impact in each unique area. This is the second article in that series. Find the first article here.]
If your community is like most across the US, there’s a gap between the number of foster families in your county and the number of foster families you need to care for every child who needs a safe, temporary home in foster care.
To address that shortage of foster families, communities often invest more resources in foster family recruitment – an understandable response. But perhaps there is a way to play chess instead of checkers when it comes to having more than enough foster and kinship families.
Family preservation is one long-term strategy, helping families stay together and keeping kids out of foster care right from the start.
But your community can also make some “chess” moves during foster care to help close the gap and reach more than enough foster and kinship families for every child to have an ideal placement. Community support for foster and kinship families, social workers and biological families during foster care has the dual benefit of improving outcomes for children and reducing the number of foster families your community needs.
1) Support foster and kinship families to help keep their homes open longer
Foster families face an emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually exhausting road. As a result, about 30-50% of foster families decide to quit fostering each year. These high turnover rates affect both outcomes for children and the number of new foster families your community needs.
Low retention rates mean your community has to recruit more families each year just to keep the same total number of homes open to care for children.
And kinship families – grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other extended family – often take in children on very short notice. There are many benefits to placing children with kin rather than strangers, but kinship families often have little financial or material buffer to support additional family members. And like foster families, kinship families need support to prevent burnout and to provide stability for children.
When foster or kinship families burn out and have to close their homes, any children currently placed with them have to experience the trauma of being uprooted and placed in a new home again.
Data from 2021 shows that more than a third of foster children move through three or more placements in a year. Wherever possible, stable placements offer children an environment to develop a sense of safety and belonging – crucial factors for their mental, physical and emotional health.
So when your community supports foster and kinship families effectively and increases family retention rates, you’re both lessening the pain and trauma children experience and reducing the pressure on the foster care system to recruit more foster families to solve the shortage.
How to support foster and kinship families to prevent burnout
Coordinated relational, material, spiritual and emotional support for foster and kinship families makes a difference in how long they can keep their homes open.
Churches already have mechanisms for many of these types of support as part of their life together – meal trains, benevolence or diaconate funds, prayer ministries and more. These existing ministries can be used to wrap around foster and kinship families in powerful ways.
There are also more formal programs to help mobilize family support. Using Promise 686, a church-based model for wrap-around support, a congregation can recruit and train volunteers to serve on a specific family’s Care Community. These Care Communities coordinate and supply meals, transportation, interim child care, supplies and any other practical help a family might need.
When supported by Care Communities, 90% of new foster families keep their homes open for a second year – compared to 50% without this support. This greatly helps reduce the foster family shortage.
2) Support caseworkers to help children reach permanency
Child welfare professionals bear one of the most important responsibilities in our communities: the safety and well-being of our children. These social workers have a hard job, resulting in high rates of burnout and a historical turnover rate of between 20-40% per year.
As the Body of Christ, we’re called to care for and serve our neighbors in child welfare as they bear heavy burdens. And when social workers have the support they need, children spend less time in foster care and are more likely to achieve permanency.
One impact study done in a local child welfare office in Milwaukee County found that children who had one consistent case worker achieved permanency 74.5% of the time. If they had two caseworkers, that number dropped to 17.5%. In cases where children had six or seven case managers, their permanency rate was 0.1%.
By helping caseworkers, we’re shortening the time children spend in foster care. Reuniting kids with their biological families (whenever possible) or facilitating prompt adoption into a permanent family is better for kids – and helps lower the number of foster families your community needs at any given time and reduces the foster family shortage.
Ways to reduce turnover and burnout for social services
Communities across the country are rallying around social services to help sustain child welfare professionals in their work.
One example is the Socialight program created by Congregations for Kids in North Carolina. Alongside community-wide appreciation events, the program pairs interested social workers with volunteers who offer encouragement, prayer and individual support.
When Socialight launched in 2018, the turnover rate was 69% in Mecklenburg County. The following year, the rate dropped to 29%, and continues to remain anywhere from 19%-23%. The Socialight program is one of many factors influencing turnover rates in the region. Inviting the community to celebrate these front-line workers plays a role in changing the narrative about what caseworkers do every day and helps people understand the foster care system. Building on a strong start in North Carolina, other organizations across the US are now partnering with Congregations to Kids to implement the Socialight model in their communities.
While policy-level factors – like resourcing, compensation, and caseloads – also contribute to turnover, these types of local, tangible support programs can help social workers stay in the game longer. When that happens, caseworkers can serve as a stable connection and advocate for children and families during foster care, reducing strain on the system as a whole.
3) Support biological families to improve reunification rates
When families do have to be separated, support for biological families can help families get back together and stay together.
In 2021, just under half of the children who exited foster care were reunified with their biological families or primary caretakers. By increasing reunification rates and reducing the average time it takes to reach reunification, we can help restore families and shorten the length of time children need a foster family.
Yet again, reunification with safe, stable family is good for kids and reduces the number of foster families your community needs.
How to support biological families so they can reunify
Many of the same strategies and ministry approaches that help families before foster care can also help with reunification during foster care. By providing practical, relational and emotional support for biological families, communities can walk alongside them to address the root causes of their family’s separation.
Models like Promise 686’s Care Communities can be used to provide this type of support to biological families, in addition to foster families. Specific to biological families, tools like Families Count from Lifeline Christian Services can help biological families take the steps needed for reunification. With a strong one-on-one mentorship component, Families Count is a church-based parenting curriculum that is approved by many states as an option for court-mandated educational hours for biological parents.
Everyone can do something
Because our communities feel such a pressing need for more foster families to solve the shortage, when we’re inviting churches or individuals to get involved in child welfare, our instinct is to always ask for one thing: become a foster family.
It’s an important ask – and family recruitment will always be a key strategy for reaching more than enough in your community. It’s a foundational checkers move.
But becoming a foster family isn’t the right next step for the majority of people in your community.
When we recognize the crucial role of community support during foster care, suddenly everyone can do something. By inviting churches and individuals to rally around foster families, kinship families, social workers and biological families, you’re both helping improve the lives of children and closing the gap between the number of children in care and the number of foster families you have available.
Everyone can do something. So let’s play chess and help people find their somethings.
For more resources to help you work with others in your community to provide more than enough for children and families before, during and beyond foster care, explore your next steps with CAFO’s More Than Enough initiative.