research to teaching initiative reconciling competing values in the delivery of child welfare...

Research to Teaching Initiative

Reconciling Competing Values in the Delivery of Child Welfare Services Under

ASFA, MEPA, and Community-Based Child Protection*

Richard P. Barth, Judith Goodhand, Nancy S. Dickinson

Jordan Institute for FamiliesSchool of Social Work

University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, NC 27599-3550

*based on : Barth, R.P., Goodhand, J.,& Dickinson, N.S. (2000). Reconciling competing values in the delivery of child welfare services under ASFA, MEPA and community-based child protection. In J. Zlotnick (Ed.). Changing paradigms of child welfare practice: Responding to opportunities and challenges. Washington, DC: US DHHS, ACF, ACYF, Children’s Bureau.


The Federal Policy Framework of Child Welfare Practice

Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997) Interethnic Adoption Provisions (1996) Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (1993)

• Family Preservation and Support (1994) Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare

Act (1980)


VALUES

POLICY

PRACTICE

CHALLENGES

• Underlying values in the professional and public sectors will influence implementation

• Conflicting values may result when new policies are implemented but not reconciled with old policies

• Value conflicts may result in incomplete implementation when there is a discordance between practitioner’s own values and public policy


Tornado of Valuesin

Child Welfare•Legal permanency

•Psychological permanency

•Continuity of care

•Community-based child protection

•Safety

•Reasonable efforts•Racial & cultural heritage


AFTERMATH:

“ . . . a practice environment where equitable and efficient

practice is at risk.”


The Development of MEPA, ASFA, and Community Based

Child Protection

AACWA (1980)

Emphasis on Legal Permanency

Emphasis on Psychological Continuity

ASFA (1997)

Community BasedChild Protection

MEPA (1993)IAP (1996)

Civil Rights Act (1964)Rest

rictio

ns on U

se of R

ace in

Public Polic

y


Brief Child Welfare Policy Recap

AACWA (1980) to ASFA (1997)

Both policies consistently emphasize:• Timely provision of child welfare services• Legal permanency for children


AACWA to ASFA: Value Shifts

Provisions within ASFA de-emphasize attention to continuity and community.

• Child’s safety is priority in child welfare decision making• Agencies will forego reasonable prevention and

reunification efforts for some children• Concurrent planning• Children are entitled to “reasonable efforts” to an

adoptive home if they cannot go home• Agencies must assure that children can be adopted

across county or state lines, to avoid delay or denial of placement


Permanency Planning Under AACWA

Legal Permanency:

• Legally defines time frames, reasonable efforts requirements, and administrative procedures.

• Creates a secure legal status for children who can not return home.

Psychological Permanency:

• Acknowledges “attachment” and a “feeling of belonging” as beneficial to children.

• Conceptual basis for the “family continuity” movement.

•Weights past time with caregiver more than future legal relationship to caregiver.


Goals of Family Continuity Practice

Supporting families

Child protection

Planning for permanence

Psychological Permanence

(VALUES)

No federal laws enforce family continuity practice

Kinship foster careNeighborhood foster care

(PRACTICE)

Placing siblings together Open adoption


Community-Based Child Protection

What is it?• Emerged in the late

1980’s & early 1990’s• Family preservation

emphasis• Community-based

planning and partnerships

• Designed to strengthen local neighborhood responses

Examples:• Annie E. Casey

Family to Family Initiative

• Clark Foundation’s Community Partnership Initiative

• Kellogg Foundation’s Families for Kids

• Children’s Bureau Initiatives


MEPA/IAP: Traditional Civil Rights and Child Welfare Values

Civil Rights• Race is not a permissible

consideration for public policy making unless there are clear reasons for affirmative action.

• There can be no tolerance for discrimination against adults on the basis of race

Child Welfare• The need for children to

feel comfortable is a core principal of culturally competent child welfare practice.

• Adoption is a children’s program and potential adoptive parents have no significant standing


Civil Rights and Child WelfareCivil Rights

• Practitioners cannot be allowed to use race but will still try to use it; therefore auditing and fines will be necessary for enforcement.

Child Welfare

• Agencies should be allowed to use race in a sensible way--e.g., allowing same race placements if families are already in the pool and no delays will result from matching.


MEPA and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions

MEPA (Multiethnic Placement Act, 1993) prohibits federally-funded agencies and entities from:• Denying anyone the opportunity to become

a foster or adoptive parent due to the race of either the parent or the child.

• Denying the child the opportunity to be placed due to the race of either the parent or the child.


MEPA requires states to develop plans for the diligent recruitment of

potential foster and adoptive families that reflect the diversity of the children in need of placement.

MEPA and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions

MEPA did not Prohibit ALL consideration of race


Interethnic Adoption Provisions (1996)

Further limited the extent to which race can be considered in adoptive and foster placement.

MEPA: May not deny placement “solely” on the basis of race.

IAP: May not deny placement on the basis of race.

MEPA: May not “categorically” deny to any person the opportunity to become an adoptive or foster parent.

IAP: May not deny to any person the opportunity to become an adoptive or foster parent.


Value Juggling for Front Line Staff

• Personal Values

• Agency Values

• Policy Values

Community,

Culture/Race

Legal

Permanence

Continuity

SAFETY


Four Key Child Welfare Values

1. Safety

2. Permanency

3. Extended Family Continuity

4. Community/Racial/Cultural

Continuity


Safety

ASFA: • Safety for children is

delivered by legally ensuring against reabuse and providing permanence for children.

Community-Based• Safety for children

is delivered through stronger families and communities.


Safety

Preservation vs. Safety

How should the competing value of allowing a mother the chance to care for her newborn be weighed against the longer-term safety concerns for that child?

Community Continuity vs. Community Safety

How should the general level of safety in the community be considered when placing a child into an otherwise safe foster or kin home?


ASFA

Legal permanence via adoption is the highest priority after reunification.

Permanency

Community-based Practice

A child’s right to be with the child’s own family and kin is heavily stressed--at times weighted more heavily than legal permanency.


Extended Family ContinuityASFA

Requires the termination of parental rights and responsibilities for children heading for long-term foster care (unless compelling reasons exist not to TPRR).


Long-term placement without TPRR--especially with legal guardianship--can be an acceptable alternative if the child cannot return to live with her birth family.


Community, Racial, Cultural Continuity

ASFA

• Places no weight on racial, cultural or ethnic continuity

• Timely legal permanency (even if across state or county lines) is more highly valued than neighborhood placement.


• Increases the likelihood that children will be placed in same race or familiar cultural placements (which hopefully evolves into an adoptive placement if reunification is not possible).


Child

Family: birth, kin, adoptive, foster

Community

Community/Racial/Cultural Continuity

Community Practice value states that placement in child’s own neighborhood will:

• Reduce child’s trauma

• Minimize family disruption

• Facilitate reunification

• Reduce child reentry due to increased social support

• Increase adoptive placements that are within the same race or culture.


Strategies & Servicesfor

Reconciling Tensions That Arise Between Various

Elements of a Competing Child Welfare Value System

Strategies & Servicesfor

Reconciling Tensions That Arise Between Various

Elements of a Competing Child Welfare Value System


Child Welfare

Changing child welfare practices and values is like changing the wheel on an express train moving at 100 miles an hour

The Challenge


Strategies & Services

• Geographic assignment of cases• Family group decision making or case

conferencing• Neighborhood foster families • Pre-service training for foster-adoptive families

and child welfare workers• Immediate services• Shared family care• Concurrent planning• Culturally competent and fair practice• Monitoring and agency self-evaluation


Child welfare workers, supervisors and middle managers are assigned to specific neighborhoods and are responsible for:• Familiarity with resources, supports and strengths of neighborhood• Engaging the community in an active plan of child protection• Developing and supporting foster and adoptive families

Geographic assignment of cases


Geographic assignment of cases

Practice Example:(Cuyahoga County, Ohio -- after 5 years)

• Increase of neighborhood foster families of over 70%

• Staff assigned to neighborhoods developed greater regard for the communities where they worked and became more accepted within the community.


Family Group Decision Making or Case Conferencing (FGDM/CC)

Meetings which involve family members, relatives, child welfare workers, and neighborhood representatives•Family has a voice in a supportive environment and provides essential information•Social worker defines role, concerns, agency policies, legal constraints, and requirements•Expeditious development of a safety or permanency plan for the child•An opportunity to identify people who could offer legally permanent alternative placements


Neighborhood Foster Families

• Partnership between foster families and birth families and social workers to expedite reunification or the achievement of another permanency goal

• A new job description for foster families and social workers

• A support system for birth, foster, and adoptive families


Pre-service Training for Foster-adoptive Families and Child Welfare

Workers• To provide foster and adoptive parents and new staff an

orientation to child welfare legislation and agency principles, policies and practice

• To create a support system among the foster/adoptive families

• To develop a potential cadre of second families for children who will understand the value of legal permanency and will work as partners for reunification or another form of permanency


Immediate Services

Immediate services can help to reconcile concerns about the ability of families to preserve themselves in the face of shortened ASFA timelines.

Practice example:• In-house drug treatment services

(Jefferson County, Colorado)


Shared Family Care

• Offers an alternative to in-home services and to out-of-home care by arranging the placement of the entire biological family in a foster home or group setting (sometimes in concert with drug or mental health day treatment)

• Endeavors to maximize pursuit of the values of child protection and family continuity


Concurrent Planning

• Institutes a concurrent process of:A) Family reunification efforts

B) Adoption planning (should reunification efforts ultimately fail)

Attempts to maximize the likelihoods of:A) ReunificationB) TimelinessC) Legal permanence


Culturally Competent & Fair Practice

•Bridging different perspectives on the role of race and culture in child welfare

•Developing ways to assess the individual needs of a child beyond their racial or ethnic group membership

•Creation of additional ways to achieve the goals of diligent recruitment for families of color


Monitoring and Agency Self Evaluation

• To help distinguish between those innovations which meet several of our value standards and those which may meet some but seriously compromise others

• To permit midcourse corrections

• To encourage dialogue about practice values, goals and outcomes


Are we calling for a detailed blueprint for providing services that eliminates the discretion of child welfare workers?

NO. Child welfare services workers make difficult choices that require an understanding of the specific mandates and underlying values of policy without the interference of their own values.


Breaking Value Ties

Individualized child & family assessment• The best choice among competing values, may

be contingent upon the assets and needs of a particular child

• Meeting the (longterm) needs of children (and families) is the constant value that must always be weighed against the others


Breaking Value Ties (continued)

Structured decision making • Decisions should be made with the

foundation of known and understood values and predictable outcomes

• At the same time, decisions should be enlightened by the circumstances of the individual child


Tools for Structure and Support of Policy Implementation

Clear articulation of core values, principles and goalsDissemination of values and principles to all staff members in a process that encourages dialogue but defines boundariesTraining to orient staff to changes in procedure

Strategies to keep the core values and principles of the agency visible and viableRoutine procedures to test and re-test agency practice against the stated values, principles and policies


Clarification of Values and Procedures

Cultural Competence and Fairness

Legal Permanency

Child Welfare Values Framework

Child Safety

Public Support for Child Welfare Services


Thank you very much

Thanks, too, to Troy Martin for his thoughtful contributions to this project.

research to teaching initiative reconciling competing values in the delivery of child welfare...

Documents

child welfare act

child welfare decision

initiative aacwa

initiative permanency

public policy slide

initiative tornado of

aacwa legal permanency

initiative aftermath