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MONTEREY
COUNTY 2007 has been a year of positive integration of permanency into all aspects of our child welfare practice. Permanency conversations start with our first TDMs (team decision-making meetings) at entry. Our Family to Family recruitment efforts are focused on homes for teens. To support relatives, foster parents, and adoptive parents who have come forward, we have offered advanced training for them to include classes on understanding the adolescent brain, educational issues, interventions with teens, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning), Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting's "Ensuring Well-Being and Normalcy for Children in Foster Care," and specialized foster care training. We recognize that parenting older youth is a challenge and we must support our caregivers. We brought in Regina Louise who spoke to a community audience on her foster care and adoption experience and used the opportunity to recruit families. We have hired a social worker to help with relative searches. Student interns are also used to data mine and do Internet searches. Wraparound is being used to reunify older youth who have been in foster care or group homes for years. Permanency Conferences are mandatory for any child who does not have a permanent connection. We added a position to our Adoption Unit to build capacity to work with older youth. Our key community collaborations include CASA, Children's Behavioral Health, Peacock Acres, Kinship Center, Family Linkages, Aspira, and Unity Care, Inc. We meet quarterly as a Young Adult Resource Collaborative (YARC) to discuss a host of issues that are critical to the permanence and well-being of older youth. We recently met with our court at our monthly Brown Bag to discuss Permanency Conferences. A report of our CPYP progress was also presented to our Children's Council. In the four years of participation in CPYP, we have reduced the number of children with a long-term foster care goal by 30% (201 to 140). Acknowledging that many youth have already emancipated from foster care without a permanent connection, we have identified youth without a permanent connection as a key target population for our THP-Plus (Transitional Housing Program-Plus) program which should be up and running in January of 2008.
Success Story A Permanency Conference was held in February 2007 for a 15 year old youth living in a group home. He had eight support people in attendance that he invited. One of the attendees was the parent of his best friend. Afterward, this parent, along with her son, came forward and stated they were interested in being his family. The youth has since moved in with the family and they are proceeding with legal guardianship.
Contact: 10-2007 |
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