Permanency/Well-being
Permanency and Well-being Outcomes: Children will be placed in foster care only when other family and community based alternatives are not an option. For children who are placed in foster care, a focus will be placed on promoting their well-being and children will be discharged in a timely manner to safe, permanent homes. When discharge to a family is not possible, youth 18 or older will be discharged with permanent connections to a caring adult.
Practice Strategies include:
- Strengthen family engagement strategies that are culturally competent throughout the life of the case. Family engagement includes:
- Early and ongoing identification, location and engagement of all parents, relatives and significant others in the child’s life;
- Use of family meetings and engaging other adult permanency resources in planning and caring for children (including their education, emotional and medical well-being);
- Early, frequent and developmentally appropriate visiting between children in foster care and their parents, siblings and other identified permanency resources unless there is a compelling safety issue; and,
- Utilization of concurrent planning strategies to engage families in early alternative permanency planning using full disclosure and early placement of children with a committed resource.
- Sustain and strengthen the partnership between child welfare and the court systems at the State and local levels with a focus on shared time-to-permanency data and collaborative improvement strategies.
- Strengthen standards for foster homes and support recruitment efforts that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the children in care.
- Other local innovations and initiatives.