Spring, 2009

Permanency Planning Today: Spring 2009

This issue of Permanency Planning Today discusses and provides examples of family engagement in various aspects of child welfare – from case planning to system improvement – in order to achieve positive outcomes for children and youth, while recognizing the relationship between family engagement and issues such as immigration and racial disproportion in the child welfare system.

 In this issue, you’ll find:

•  A description of New Mexico’s innovative use of icebreaker conversations between foster parents and biological parents. This approach recognizes the knowledge and information about a child in care that each can share in order to support the child and facilitate future sharing of information.

• An article on the Familyconnect Guides, a resource to support child welfare professionals in reassuring everyone of the importance of family visits and connections, normalizing challenges related to visits, and working collaboratively and in a child-centered way.

• An excerpt from an NRCFCPPP webcast in which Dr. Ilze Earner and Dr. Alan Dettlaff discuss the intersection of child welfare and immigration and migration, the importance of understanding immigration status, the meaning of cultural competence with immigrant families, and promising practices and available resources.

• An interview in which Joyce James, LMSW-AP, Assistant Commissioner of Texas Child Protective Services, shares steps that Texas has taken over the past several years to reduce racial disproportion in the child welfare system, for example, by effectively utilizing data and by participating in training around undoing racism. She discusses the system-wide shift in philosophy and approach that took place in Texas in order to prevent families involvement with the child welfare system and to work with parents who do come to the attention of the system in new ways in order to increase positive outcomes for families, children, and youth.