Results
Over the past decade, we have seen the impact of Family to Family in our sites across the country. States like Arizona, California, Tennessee, Michigan, and Colorado are all redesigning their child welfare systems using principles based on Family to Family core strategies. Although much of our work is focused on improving permanence for children by ensuring that every child has a permanent family or family-like connection, our overarching strategic agenda is now focused on addressing several areas of system reform:
- Racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare;
- Permanence -- including older youth, runification, guardianship, and adoption issues;
- Kinship care -- effective services, supports, policies and practices;
- Birth parent, youth, and community engagement;
- Congregate care -- reducing utilization, alternatives, innovative service models, and zero tolerance for babies/young children in congregate settings;
- Effective services for families with intensive needs -- substance abuse, domestic violence, aftercare services; and
- Educational outcomes for children in foster care.
Our successes have had a powerful influence on the child welfare field. We expect to continue making progress toward key results such as decreasing the number of children entering foster care; increasing the number of children connected to permanent families; ensuring more children have their emotional and physical needs met; and reducing disparities related to race, gender, age, and ethnicity in the child welfare system. Some recent results from this work include:
- In Alaska, 70 percent of the children who received a Team Decision Making Meeting, which involves a full network of supportive adults, were able to stay at home with their birth family or a relative rather than a foster home. These are children who would have been placed in foster care if Family to Family strategies had not been implemented.
- In Los Angeles, research shows 75 percent of youth who were at risk of being moved from one home to another were able to remain safely in their current foster home as a result of Family to Family strategies. We have seen steady increases as well in children being reunited with their families in many of our sites.
Following an 18-month self-assessment process, the Foundation has now chosen to target fewer sites with more intensive resources, including extensive technical assistance. Partnering with others, we will continue to replicate the Family to Family model to have an impact on improving child welfare practice nationally.
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