If young people have permanence, they have family members — including at least one parenting adult — who intend to always be there for them.
There are two general ways to describe permanence: legal and relational. In legal permanence, a court order has cemented and validated a child’s relationship with a parenting youth. In relational permanence, a youth maintains lifelong connections with others, including at least one adult who serves as a meaningful and permanent parental figure. This connection is subjectively defined by the youth irrespective of a legal status.
A new tool, the Foster Home Estimator, can help agencies build a more robust pool of foster parents by more accurately estimating how many additional foster homes are needed, especially for specific populations of children, such as teens or large sibling groups.
In A Child Welfare Leader’s Desk Guide to Building a High-Performing Agency, the Casey Foundation describes how child welfare casework can do more to provide children with stable living situations and build children’s long-term family relationships.
Every kid needs a family — which is why child welfare casework should focus on family relationships and permanence. To learn how public agencies can implement high-performing practices, join the Casey Foundation for Getting to Permanence: The Practices of High-Performing Child Welfare Agencies, a webinar at 2 p.m. EST on July 19, 2016.
The Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative addresses challenges faced by youth in foster care and aims to make their experiences as typical when compared to thier peers not in custody.
In this episode of CaseyCast, the Foundation’s Lisa Hamilton and Delaware’s Division of Family Services director, Shirley Roberts, strike up an inspiring conversation about the state’s evolving child welfare system.
The federal Strengthening Families Act (SFA) provides new opportunities for child welfare agencies to create typical family experiences for children and youth in foster care. In this third installment of a six-part webinar series, the Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative highlights key SFA provisions that leverage the law’s enforcement mechanisms to not only improve outcomes for kids, but establish better practices from the start.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Baltimore City have partnered to launch the newest Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative site in Baltimore.
In 2011, Delaware’s child welfare system wasn’t just in trouble — it was in crisis, with too many teens entering out-of-home care and later exiting foster care disconnected from family. To fix this broken system, the state launched a sweeping, data-driven reform effort called Outcomes Matter. The initiative boosted morale among caseworkers and gave kids and families a critical voice in the decision-making process. But the best part? The effort helped improve the well-being of Delaware’s children and families.
A return to their social work roots. That’s how caseworkers in Delaware’s state-run child welfare agency describe the results of a three-year improvement effort presented in Crisis and Opportunity in Delaware — a new Casey Foundation case study.
In a Jim Casey Initiative report, young people from foster care provide recommendations for state child welfare agencies and policymakers that should help these youth achieve normalcy while in foster care.
