Saturday, December 16, 2006
It's About Time!!
.
U.S.Giving Troubled Families a Say in What’s Best for the Children
A mother, Misty, left, and her children met with social service workers in McMinnville, Tenn., to discuss custody of her children.
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
Published: December 16, 2006
McMINNVILLE, Tenn. — In an effort to correct dysfunctional foster care systems, a growing number of child welfare agencies around the country are reaching outside their ranks to involve troubled families and the people in their lives in wrenching decisions about where endangered children should live.
Social workers from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services are part of the team approach to resolving Misty’s child welfare case. Some agencies find that by enlisting help from grandparents, church members, school counselors and sports coaches, they can reach faster, safer and more lasting decisions that result in fewer children languishing in foster care. Under the practice, known as team decision making, a group is assembled within 24 to 48 hours after a state agency is called into a crisis situation.
Programs exist in at least 21 states. Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee have adopted the team-approach statewide, while other programs are run at the county level. Officials in Denver County, Colo., credit the team approach for a 32 percent drop in out-of-home placements since 2002. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the program has reduced the number of children in foster care by more than half since 2001. Tennessee has reduced the number of children in state care by more than 1,000 since March 2004, when there were 10,600 in the system.
Methods differ, but the philosophy is the same: that even families under scrutiny from state agencies can help make positive decisions for their children.
Some advocates for children say the strategy gives negligent parents too much sway. But many child welfare officials believe the team process works.
Historically, “agencies called all the shots and told families everything that was wrong with them,” said
Viola P. Miller, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, who instituted her state’s new model.
“But kids don’t exist in isolation,” Ms. Miller said. “If we are really going to keep families safe, we need to do that in the context of communities and family.”
In this rural outpost between Nashville and Knoxville, 12 people gathered recently to decide whether Misty N., a 26-year-old single mother of four, whose children were taken into state custody last February, deserved to get them back.
“Let’s start by acknowledging Misty’s strengths,” said Carrie McCrary, a group facilitator with the state, welcoming “Misty’s team.” The group included Misty, her mother, the children’s court-appointed guardian, a local Head Start coordinator, her older children’s school psychologist and several social workers. One by one they offered affirmations.
Misty (who asked that her family members’ last names be withheld to protect their privacy) had moved from a homeless shelter into a two-bedroom trailer with her mother. Though Misty has mild retardation, she was absorbing newly learned parenting skills, yelling at her children less and offering more positive reinforcement. She was also providing nutritious food during visits with her children.
And it was clear, everyone agreed, that she loved her children: Ramon, 6; Domiann, 5; Roberto, 4, and Pedro, 2.
“We need to talk about the sex offenders,” Rachel Kirby, the children’s court-appointed guardian, said, shattering the mood.
Misty had been living with a sex offender when her children were taken away. She had a brief involvement with another.
“We just need to be clear,” Ms. Kirby said to Misty. “When you’re standing in court, if there is a sexual offender in the home, that throws all the other good work out the window.”
Around the country, where similar strategies are in place, a group can meet for as long as two years, helping social workers assess whether families can be reunited or whether children should be moved toward adoption or legal guardianship, with relatives or an outside family. Groups sometimes continue to meet after a placement to monitor children’s progress.
Child welfare agencies maintain ultimate power of approval, but deference is given to the collective wisdom and recommendation of the team.
No comprehensive long-term studies have been conducted to assess whether the team approach reduces incidents of child abuse. But in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which instituted its program in 1994, Jim McCafferty, director of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, credits team meetings with helping reduce the number of children in the system to 2,702 this month from 6,237 in 2001, when the county’s largest city, Cleveland, was rebounding from a crack epidemic. The number of children re-entering the system within 18 months dropped to 9 percent in 2004 from 16 percent in 1996.
Roxane White, manager of the Denver Department of Human Services, said that in addition to reducing out-of-home placements, team meetings had reduced incidents of new abuse to just over 2.6 percent from 6 percent in 2002.
But some advocates for children say the team system may be keeping children with parents when they would benefit more from foster care.
“The pendulum may have swung too much in the opposite direction,” said Cyndy Bailes, executive director of CASA of the Tennessee Heartland, part of a national group of court-appointed special advocates for children.
Ms. Bailes’s organization works in five counties in East Tennessee. She says her volunteers have complained that the team system there is poorly organized, that families do not cooperate and that participants have felt pressured by the Department of Children’s Services to support family reunification over foster care or termination of parental rights.
Some social workers disagree.
“I have really bought into it, because it is not so much about blaming, so there is less resentment all around,” said Ms. McCrary of Children’s Services.
Cheryl McGuire, the caseworker who leads Misty’s team, said the system relieved pressure on overworked case managers. Misty and her mother, Geraldine, have seen the change in the system, they said, from the inside out.
Geraldine took Misty in as a foster child when she was 5 weeks old. Geraldine, who tacked down beltloops in a garment factory, and her husband adopted Misty and her older brother, Chris, when they were 2 and 3 years old.
After Geraldine’s husband died in 1983, she was unable to cope. Misty and Chris went back into state care.
Now Misty’s four children are in the system. Of the three known fathers, only one has been tangentially involved. It was Geraldine who called Children’s Services in February, because Misty, she said, “was running wild.”
At 64, Geraldine said, she was too old to care for the children on her own.
“It scares me half to death to think that she might not get her kids back,” said Geraldine, who is now retired. “But at the time it was best for the children. I hoped it would straighten her out.”
Geraldine said the team approach offered families more support than in years past when decisions were made by a single caseworker.
“When I was a foster parent, they just dropped off the kids and came back once a month to make sure they were clothed and fed,” she said.
Misty, too, said the experience differed from her past memories.
“It ain’t the first time I’ve been in here,” she said, referring to the county office of the Department of Children’s Services. “But this way here, it’s helping me more. Helping me to get my kids back.”
Teams around the country adhere to tight timelines for determining permanent placements, typically within a year or two.
Placements with relatives are preferred, but sometimes so-called kinship placements are not with biological relatives, but with people whom the child considers family.
In Rutherford County, southeast of Nashville, a 13-year-old girl was recently placed in foster care after her mother’s suicide. She responded poorly, acting out and wetting her bed. She asked to be with her mother’s boyfriend’s mother, whom she called Granny. The girl’s participation in the team resulted in her adoption, last month, by her grandmother figure.
With no similar possibilities for Misty’s children, the stakes of her team’s decision are higher. By the one-year mark in February they must recommend reunification or make the children available for adoption.
The children are in a rare situation in which the foster parents, a stable family in a nearby town, have agreed to keep all four long term.
Misty and Geraldine are living on Geraldine’s $789-a-month Social Security check, plus food stamps. Where would the children sleep in the two-bedroom mobile home and could the women’s limited resources provide for them? asked Ms. McGuire, the team leader, in the hour-and-a-half meeting on Misty’s case.
“It don’t leave a lot of room for extras, but it can sustain us,” Geraldine said, adding that they would get extra food stamps with the children.
The discussion turned to the children.
Roberto has continuing problems with aggression. Domiann, one person suggested, had taken on a “dominant mother role” among the sibling group. Pedro, someone mentioned, might suffer from an attachment disorder. Ramon, participants observed, has been gorging during visits with his mother, a nervous behavior he does not engage in at his foster home.
Next, the group laid out goals for Misty to reach before February: She must have a psychological evaluation and continue training with social workers. She must stop associating with criminals.
After she and Geraldine left the room, the team members discussed the weight of the decision yet to come.
“The tough fact is that she may do everything we tell her to,” Ms. Kirby said. “She may work as hard as she can, and still not be able to get her children back.”
U.S.Giving Troubled Families a Say in What’s Best for the Children
A mother, Misty, left, and her children met with social service workers in McMinnville, Tenn., to discuss custody of her children.
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
Published: December 16, 2006
McMINNVILLE, Tenn. — In an effort to correct dysfunctional foster care systems, a growing number of child welfare agencies around the country are reaching outside their ranks to involve troubled families and the people in their lives in wrenching decisions about where endangered children should live.
Social workers from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services are part of the team approach to resolving Misty’s child welfare case. Some agencies find that by enlisting help from grandparents, church members, school counselors and sports coaches, they can reach faster, safer and more lasting decisions that result in fewer children languishing in foster care. Under the practice, known as team decision making, a group is assembled within 24 to 48 hours after a state agency is called into a crisis situation.
Programs exist in at least 21 states. Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee have adopted the team-approach statewide, while other programs are run at the county level. Officials in Denver County, Colo., credit the team approach for a 32 percent drop in out-of-home placements since 2002. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the program has reduced the number of children in foster care by more than half since 2001. Tennessee has reduced the number of children in state care by more than 1,000 since March 2004, when there were 10,600 in the system.
Methods differ, but the philosophy is the same: that even families under scrutiny from state agencies can help make positive decisions for their children.
Some advocates for children say the strategy gives negligent parents too much sway. But many child welfare officials believe the team process works.
Historically, “agencies called all the shots and told families everything that was wrong with them,” said
Viola P. Miller, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, who instituted her state’s new model.
“But kids don’t exist in isolation,” Ms. Miller said. “If we are really going to keep families safe, we need to do that in the context of communities and family.”
In this rural outpost between Nashville and Knoxville, 12 people gathered recently to decide whether Misty N., a 26-year-old single mother of four, whose children were taken into state custody last February, deserved to get them back.
“Let’s start by acknowledging Misty’s strengths,” said Carrie McCrary, a group facilitator with the state, welcoming “Misty’s team.” The group included Misty, her mother, the children’s court-appointed guardian, a local Head Start coordinator, her older children’s school psychologist and several social workers. One by one they offered affirmations.
Misty (who asked that her family members’ last names be withheld to protect their privacy) had moved from a homeless shelter into a two-bedroom trailer with her mother. Though Misty has mild retardation, she was absorbing newly learned parenting skills, yelling at her children less and offering more positive reinforcement. She was also providing nutritious food during visits with her children.
And it was clear, everyone agreed, that she loved her children: Ramon, 6; Domiann, 5; Roberto, 4, and Pedro, 2.
“We need to talk about the sex offenders,” Rachel Kirby, the children’s court-appointed guardian, said, shattering the mood.
Misty had been living with a sex offender when her children were taken away. She had a brief involvement with another.
“We just need to be clear,” Ms. Kirby said to Misty. “When you’re standing in court, if there is a sexual offender in the home, that throws all the other good work out the window.”
Around the country, where similar strategies are in place, a group can meet for as long as two years, helping social workers assess whether families can be reunited or whether children should be moved toward adoption or legal guardianship, with relatives or an outside family. Groups sometimes continue to meet after a placement to monitor children’s progress.
Child welfare agencies maintain ultimate power of approval, but deference is given to the collective wisdom and recommendation of the team.
No comprehensive long-term studies have been conducted to assess whether the team approach reduces incidents of child abuse. But in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which instituted its program in 1994, Jim McCafferty, director of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, credits team meetings with helping reduce the number of children in the system to 2,702 this month from 6,237 in 2001, when the county’s largest city, Cleveland, was rebounding from a crack epidemic. The number of children re-entering the system within 18 months dropped to 9 percent in 2004 from 16 percent in 1996.
Roxane White, manager of the Denver Department of Human Services, said that in addition to reducing out-of-home placements, team meetings had reduced incidents of new abuse to just over 2.6 percent from 6 percent in 2002.
But some advocates for children say the team system may be keeping children with parents when they would benefit more from foster care.
“The pendulum may have swung too much in the opposite direction,” said Cyndy Bailes, executive director of CASA of the Tennessee Heartland, part of a national group of court-appointed special advocates for children.
Ms. Bailes’s organization works in five counties in East Tennessee. She says her volunteers have complained that the team system there is poorly organized, that families do not cooperate and that participants have felt pressured by the Department of Children’s Services to support family reunification over foster care or termination of parental rights.
Some social workers disagree.
“I have really bought into it, because it is not so much about blaming, so there is less resentment all around,” said Ms. McCrary of Children’s Services.
Cheryl McGuire, the caseworker who leads Misty’s team, said the system relieved pressure on overworked case managers. Misty and her mother, Geraldine, have seen the change in the system, they said, from the inside out.
Geraldine took Misty in as a foster child when she was 5 weeks old. Geraldine, who tacked down beltloops in a garment factory, and her husband adopted Misty and her older brother, Chris, when they were 2 and 3 years old.
After Geraldine’s husband died in 1983, she was unable to cope. Misty and Chris went back into state care.
Now Misty’s four children are in the system. Of the three known fathers, only one has been tangentially involved. It was Geraldine who called Children’s Services in February, because Misty, she said, “was running wild.”
At 64, Geraldine said, she was too old to care for the children on her own.
“It scares me half to death to think that she might not get her kids back,” said Geraldine, who is now retired. “But at the time it was best for the children. I hoped it would straighten her out.”
Geraldine said the team approach offered families more support than in years past when decisions were made by a single caseworker.
“When I was a foster parent, they just dropped off the kids and came back once a month to make sure they were clothed and fed,” she said.
Misty, too, said the experience differed from her past memories.
“It ain’t the first time I’ve been in here,” she said, referring to the county office of the Department of Children’s Services. “But this way here, it’s helping me more. Helping me to get my kids back.”
Teams around the country adhere to tight timelines for determining permanent placements, typically within a year or two.
Placements with relatives are preferred, but sometimes so-called kinship placements are not with biological relatives, but with people whom the child considers family.
In Rutherford County, southeast of Nashville, a 13-year-old girl was recently placed in foster care after her mother’s suicide. She responded poorly, acting out and wetting her bed. She asked to be with her mother’s boyfriend’s mother, whom she called Granny. The girl’s participation in the team resulted in her adoption, last month, by her grandmother figure.
With no similar possibilities for Misty’s children, the stakes of her team’s decision are higher. By the one-year mark in February they must recommend reunification or make the children available for adoption.
The children are in a rare situation in which the foster parents, a stable family in a nearby town, have agreed to keep all four long term.
Misty and Geraldine are living on Geraldine’s $789-a-month Social Security check, plus food stamps. Where would the children sleep in the two-bedroom mobile home and could the women’s limited resources provide for them? asked Ms. McGuire, the team leader, in the hour-and-a-half meeting on Misty’s case.
“It don’t leave a lot of room for extras, but it can sustain us,” Geraldine said, adding that they would get extra food stamps with the children.
The discussion turned to the children.
Roberto has continuing problems with aggression. Domiann, one person suggested, had taken on a “dominant mother role” among the sibling group. Pedro, someone mentioned, might suffer from an attachment disorder. Ramon, participants observed, has been gorging during visits with his mother, a nervous behavior he does not engage in at his foster home.
Next, the group laid out goals for Misty to reach before February: She must have a psychological evaluation and continue training with social workers. She must stop associating with criminals.
After she and Geraldine left the room, the team members discussed the weight of the decision yet to come.
“The tough fact is that she may do everything we tell her to,” Ms. Kirby said. “She may work as hard as she can, and still not be able to get her children back.”
# posted by Senior Mom @ 9:38 AM 
