While the foster care system plays a vital role in providing kids a safe place for a season, we can also prevent kids from entering foster care in the first place by addressing the causes of family separation, identifying potential red flags to keep families together, and providing intensive support for families on the brink of having their children removed.
[Editor’s Note: As we kick off 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 first article in that series]
When we hear about foster care on the news or social media, it’s almost always about the urgent need for more foster families to care for children.
Kids are sleeping in offices. There aren’t enough families to keep sibling groups together. Children are being moved out of their counties and school districts.
This need is real, and we absolutely have a responsibility to care for vulnerable children and families during foster care. So our instinct is to immediately respond with our best checkers move: recruit more and more foster families.
It’s an important move to meet an urgent need.
But what if we could simultaneously play chess, keeping children from having to enter foster care to begin with?
Preserving families prevents the pain of separation from the start
While the foster care system plays a vital role in providing kids a safe place for a season, we can also prevent kids from entering foster care in the first place by addressing the causes of family separation, identifying potential red flags to keep families together, and providing intensive support for families on the brink of having their children removed.
Investing in family preservation is a strategic way our communities can play chess – not just checkers – and help us move from not enough to more than enough for children and families.
And most importantly, when we invest in family preservation, we’re preventing the pain and trauma of families being separated right from the start.
Tackling your community’s unique causes of family separation
Factors like poverty, neglect and substance abuse are often drivers of family instability and contribute to family separation. But every community is unique.
Maybe your county has been hit hard by the opioid crisis, and grandparents are struggling to care for their grandkids. Maybe there are vulnerable families in your county who don’t speak English and have a hard time accessing employment or healthcare.
Here’s the good news: your community probably already has a lot of churches, nonprofits and ministries passionate about caring for people who are experiencing these challenges.
Every time a father finds stability in a substance abuse support group, or a mom can access mental health care while struggling with postpartum depression, or a grandparent gets help with an electric bill from a local church, that’s a potential family separation that’s a little less likely to materialize.
But are those ministries all intentionally connected to the world of foster care, and vice-versa?
Do these ministries have contacts in the child welfare world to help them holistically support families? Do social workers know about these ministries so they can connect struggling families to their services?
These are roadblocks we can remove in our communities when we deliberately work together to build effective collaboration and communication.
Leveraging existing ministries and services to prevent family separation
One group of foster care collaborators in Clark County, NV, is launching a platform where caseworkers can easily access resources, information and referral forms for the many services offered in their community for vulnerable children and families. This means that caseworkers can better utilize their time serving families directly and have a quick turnaround and accurate, up-to-date information when sourcing connections and resources.
The collaboration is also building personal connections with social workers in their town through events and outreach efforts, building a foundation of trust to undergird the information- sharing platform.
This type of collaboration means families can get the support and services they need to stay together quickly, and spares caseworkers from costly and time-intensive work trying to track down services.
Spotting red flags early to keep families together
As a community, we need to identify families who are struggling before the situation escalates to the point where children need to be removed for their safety.
Teachers, doctors, counselors or children’s ministry volunteers should know the warning signs of things getting hard at home – changes in how kids are acting, a parent withdrawing, or physical and mental health red flags.
But when we see the red flags, are our communities ready to act quickly and wisely?
Our communities need a care-sharing mechanism that lets social workers, teachers or people who interact with vulnerable families immediately connect the needs they see to someone in the community who can meet them. By helping with groceries, finding a car to help a parent get to work, or helping with a medical bill, people across our communities can help families regain stability and avoid separation.
One powerful tool to connect vulnerable families to the resources they need to stay together is CarePortal. Careportal is a technology platform where people who interact with children and families can immediately post requests and notify churches or community partners who can respond to and communicate about the needs right in the CarePortal system.
Providing intensive practical and relational support for vulnerable families
Once social services have opened a case or are concerned about a family’s stability, depending on the situation, removal may or may not be the next step.
In cases where there is not an immediate safety concern or signs of abuse, there are more intensive support programs that can help fill the gap and prevent kids from entering foster care. Services like mental health counseling, job training, parenting coaching, financial literacy classes and housing assistance can all help stabilize families.
But just as crucial is relational support – encouragement and connection with people who are trained and ready to walk alongside families who are regaining their footing.
Ministries and churches across the US are providing this type of relational, wrap-around care.
For example, Salty Family Services in Ormond Beach, FL, provides struggling families with a mentor who builds a relationship with them and helps meet their material, relational and spiritual needs. The ministry offers immediate resources to address crises coupled with long-term, transformational care that helps families thrive.
Churches are ideally positioned to provide this type of holistic relational and practical support. In fact, Salty Family Services grew out of a local church, and countless other churches are realizing that they have resources in place to walk alongside vulnerable families on the brink of separation.
Remember: It’s both/and, not either/or
Over the past few years, it’s been incredible to see increasing interest and investment by the foster care community in family preservation.
It’s an example of playing chess and strategically changing the game for kids and families. But the beauty – and challenge – of working to transform foster care is that it’s not an either/or scenario. It’s both/and.
Children and families need support before and during and beyond foster care. Even as we pursue family preservation, there are children who need a safe foster home or a permanent adoptive family right now.
That’s why churches, organizations and ministries can’t do this work alone.
We are each called to different roles, but collectively, we are called to the work of caring for children and families every step of the way – including before foster care.
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.
