I spent the better part of my childhood summer afternoons at our local city swimming pool.
I remember our town’s coolest teenagers camped out on their towels in the deep-end left corner of the chainlink enclosure. Why they were even at the pool and not swimming was an unsolvable mystery to any 9-year-old kid. I also remember the snack bar that was perennially kept in the black by impulsive middle school students frittering away their allowances.
And then there were the swimming pool games: sharks and minnows, chicken fights, and, of course, Marco Polo.
While my friends and I were more versed in the first two, Marco Polo is always a solid choice at the pool. One person, designated as “it,” closes their eyes and yells, “Marco!” Everyone around them has to respond, “Polo!” while trying to avoid getting tagged.
If you are “it,” it helps to be quick, but the most basic and important skill is remembering to yell “Marco” repeatedly. It doesn’t work just to try to listen for vague splashes and chase people down. You need the guidance of the responding Polo.
The Marco Polo of foster care
Foster care is a world where we enter waters of so much need and complexity, only to find ourselves trying to solve problems with solutions that continue to elude us. We organize awareness campaigns, host recruitment and drive events, build programs and mobilize our communities to engage.
And yet we still feel like we are thrashing around, grasping for anything that might work without being sure that we’ve even made progress. When that happens, it’s important to ask ourselves whether we’ve neglected one of the most basic and important elements of problem-solving. Yelling “Marco.”
Our equivalent to yelling “Marco” is this: identifying strategic data points that can help us define what we’re aiming at … and then listening to the responding “Polo” the numbers show.
Without that, progress toward more than enough for children and families will continue to elude us.
So what happens when communities take the time to yell “Marco,” identifying key pieces of data, and then charging hard after what the numbers indicate?
We asked a few leaders around the country about key local data points and how they are driving their collaborative work in foster care. Here’s what they shared.
Jamie Bartlett | Michigan | Caseworker turnover rate
Jamie Bartlett serves on staff at Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is also part of a collaborative foster care network in the area.
Bartlett shared, “About a third of foster care agency workers will leave their roles every year.”
When Bartlett started working in the foster care space, she realized that, in addition to affecting children and families, turnover also strained the system itself.
“It’s hard on the foster care agencies having to retrain new caseworkers,” she said. “Pretty often, it’s hard on the caseworkers who feel underprepared and overwhelmed.”
So Bartlett and her collaborators have spent three years building relationships with caseworkers, collaborating with local churches to host care and appreciation events, and creating deliberate space to listen to child welfare professionals.
In addition to providing encouragement and support to try to prevent burnout, these relationships have become places where new ideas are born.
For example, Bartlett explained, “Because there are five private agencies in our counties that families have to choose from, there are five different foster care orientations … And really the burden was on foster parents to attend five orientations and figure out which agency is the best fit for them.
“But as we started meeting regularly, our foster care agency workers themselves started talking about doing a joint orientation where all five workers are present at the same time, so parents can learn each distinctive of the agencies altogether and just really streamline the process.”
Responding to the data in their community, the Grand Rapids collaboration prioritized support for social workers — and it has snowballed into further progress for children and families.
Tracee Rudd | Colorado | Foster parent retention
When Tracee Rudd heard that more than half of foster families in her community were closing their homes within one year after certification, she knew that number should — and could — change.
“I also learned that most of those families say that it’s because of a lack of support,” Rudd added.
Through her work with Colorado Kids Belong and the Foster Friendly App, she is connecting families to support systems, ranging from faith communities equipped to specifically care for foster families to discounted services from businesses, with the goal of ensuring families are seen and supported. She is also working as part of a local collaborative network with other foster care leaders and advocates.
Rudd is passionate about the impact that reducing foster family turnover can have.
“Sadly, the more often that families quit fostering, especially early on, it means kids will have to move homes more often,” she said. “And the more often that kids have to move homes, the less likely it is that their case will move toward consistency and permanency, whether it’s through reunification or adoption.”
Rudd and her collaborators are working to change that foster family turnover rate. For Rudd, the goal is simple: “We want to help families continue fostering stronger and longer.”
Carly Souza | Nevada | Re-entry rates of children into care
Carly Souza of Fostering Hope, a community-based foster care ministry in Las Vegas, Nevada, encountered a statistic that made her rethink support in the reunification journey: One in five kids in foster care in Clark County have been in care previously.
After biological parents reunify with their children, focused community assistance often tapers off because reunification can be seen as the “finish line” in the foster care journey. But this statistic highlighted that children were likely to end up in foster care once again, because breaking generational cycles requires long-term support and transformation.
So Souza and other collaborators from churches and organizations in her community began to focus on support for biological parents once children return home. As she explained, they wanted to answer, “How can we step in and give these birth parents the support that they need to be able to maintain placement?”
In response, the collaboration launched Healing Our Past, a class developed in partnership with two local marriage and family therapists. The program helps parents process their own stories — many having experienced foster care themselves — while building practical and relational support systems often missing in their lives.
The results have been meaningful. Souza shared, “It’s been really rewarding over the last year and a half. We have been able to walk with 12 biological families, which isn’t a huge number. But of those 12, all 12 of them have maintained placement of their kids. We’re just striving to help families be healthy and whole.”
The data from her county guided Souza and her fellow collaborators to a key reality and a new strategy: lasting family stability requires more than reunification alone. But together, the support families need is possible.
“It takes an entire community to do it,” she added.
Playing Marco Polo where you live
So what would it look like for you and some fellow collaborators to dig into your local foster care data to identify key pieces of information to guide your strategy?
If you are looking for initial data on your county, check the More Than Enough dashboard. As you do, you might identify further data points that could help guide your work but aren’t on the dashboard — like the data points in the stories above. You can often work with your county social services to find those numbers.
Taking this step and calling out “Marco” can help keep you from blindly thrashing in frustration and help you make a lasting difference for children and families in foster care where you live.
– Jason Weber is National Director of More Than Enough, an initiative of CAFO. More Than Enough is a community of churches, organizations and advocates working toward a shared vision of more than enough for children and families before, during and beyond foster care in every US county. The More Than Enough support team strengthens the community with practical tools and resources, aiming to see more than enough well-supported families for every child in foster care — including foster, kinship, adoptive and biological families.
– Katie Casselberry is the Director of Marketing for US Initiatives at CAFO, including More Than Enough, and contributed the three county profiles above.
