Long Term and Immediate Outcomes of Family Group Conferencing in Washington State (June 2001)

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Long Term and Immediate Outcomes of Family Group Conferencing in Washington State (June 2001) September 10 2002 www.restorativepractices.org Restorative Practices E FORUM Long Term and Immediate Outcomes of Family Group Conferencing in Washington State (June 2001) NANCY SHORE, JUDITH WIRTH, KATHARINE CAHN, BRIANA YANCEY, KARIN GUNDERSON ABSTRACT in the eighties and nineties, public opinion situation is more complicated than the This article presents the findings of a retrospec- began to blame this focus on family preser- smooth easy swing of a pendulum between tive study of 70 family group conferences (FGC) vation, and called for renewed attention to family preservation or adoption. conducted in Washington State. These 70 FGCs child safety. The challenge for the child welfare system is addressed the well-being of 138 children. The The passage of the Adoption and Safe Fami- to move practice, policy, and thinking off families within the evaluation were primarily re- lies Act of 1997 (ASFA) was seen as a push to the restrictive paradigm of the pendulum ferred by foster care units rather than investiga- tive units and involved cases that had been in the the family preservation end of the arc, pri- swing. Social workers and families need to child welfare system for over 90 days. Families oritizing the safety of the children. Policies work together to create a plan that provides were invited to participate in the decision-mak- and programs shifted from family preserva- ing process, engaging both the maternal and pa- tion to pushing for timely safe permanent ternal sides of the family with greater success than placements for children. Adoption was iden- Social workers and standard case planning approaches. Children who tified as the most-rewarded strategy to re- families need to work had a conference experienced high rates of re- duce the high rate of children drifting in the together to create a plan unification or kinship placement, and low rates foster care system, and incentives were of- of re-referral to CPS. These findings generally fered to states for each adopted child. As that provides for the remained stable as long as two years post-con- ference. This study, the largest long-term fol- ASFA specified shorter timelines for parents child's immediate safety low-up study of FGC published to date, suggests to demonstrate their ability to safely care for that FGCs can be an effective planning approach their children, more than one advocate won- and takes into account a for families involved with the public child wel- dered whether parents were becoming no child's long term fare agency, resulting in safe, permanent plans more than "speed bumps" on the way to ter- developmental needs. for children at risk. mination trials. Thinking in terms of a pendulum, however, INTRODUCTION is problematic. It frames child welfare as an for the child's immediate safety and takes into Child welfare policy and practice in the either/or choice of child safety or family account a child's long term developmental United States have been described in terms preservation. Sometimes swift action to ter- needs. In the process, it is also critical to of a pendulum, swinging between child safety minate parental rights is needed due to ex- broaden notions of family to include the and family preservation. The landmark treme circumstances in the birth family. But network of extended family. The social Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act for the majority of the children the situa- worker and family must have a fuller range of 1980 (P.L. 96-272) represented a swing tion is more complex. For example parental of motion than the simple back-and-forth towards family preservation where policies prognosis for recovery from addiction hard arc of a pendulum. "Remove" or "reunify" promoted efforts to keep families intact and to assess, and likely will take more time than cannot be the only choices given the com- prevent the placement of children into fos- the child's developmental timeline (as re- plexity of child welfare cases today. ter care (Cole, 1995). As the country flected in ASFA timeframes) requires. In This challenge is particularly critical for struggled with rising foster care placements other situations, the child may have special families of color who are involved with the and a number of high profile child deaths needs that require extraordinary care. The child welfare system. Over one-half of the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESTORATIVE PRACTICES Restorative Practices September 10 2002 www.restorativepractices.org E FORUM African American children (56%), for ex- & Nixon, 1999), Australia (Swain, 1993), More work is needed with larger sample sizes ample, receiving child welfare services are in Canada (Immarigeon, 1996) and in parts of and in other settings to gain a greater un- foster care placements - twice the percent- the United States, including Colorado, New derstanding of long-term outcomes for age for white children (Children's Defense Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Cali- families. The present evaluation addresses Fund, 1999). Despite no higher levels of fornia, Oregon, and Washington. An un- this gap in our understanding of the effec- abuse African American children are more derlying philosophy of the FGC model is that tiveness of the FGC model by reporting both likely to be removed (Morton, 1999; US extended families have the commitment, re- the immediate and long-term outcomes for Department of Health and Human Services, sources and capacity to create safe and car- an ethnically diverse group of 138 children 1999), experience long stays in out of home ing plans for their children. in Washington State. care, receive fewer services (Barth, 1998; Descriptive studies, primarily focusing Close, 1983; Courtney, 1996; Olsen, 1982) upon process measures and immediate re- An underlying philosophy and wind up as legal orphans with no com- sults, show that FGCs engage more family mitted permanent home (Kemp, 1999). For members than other case-planning meth- of the FGC model is that these and all children, a broader definition ods, result in high degrees of family and extended families have the of family and a commitment to engage fam- professional satisfaction, and expand the commitment, resources ily in the case planning process is one strat- quality of support available to families who egy that could help alleviate these dispropor- have participated (for a review, see Lupton, and capacity to create safe tional numbers and increase the likelihood 1999). Findings from child welfare stud- and caring plans for their that services provided would be more cul- ies where there was not a FGC provide sup- turally appropriate. port for the importance of active family children. The practice of family group conferencing involvement. Gleeson et al (1997), for ex- (FGC) is one way to get off the pendulum ample, found that an absence of active FAMILY GROUP CONFERENCING IN THE STATE and address the safety of the children in the family involvement in case planning and OF WASHINGTON context of a permanent connection with decision-making can create a barrier to families. As practiced in Washington State, achieving permanence. FGC has been practiced in Washington State it can provide for both immediate safety, and since 1997 when two Division of Children Prior to claiming the success of FGC as an and Family Services (DCFS) managers con- intervention, however, there is a need to tracted with the University of Washington to "Remove" or "reunify" understand whether these immediate re- implement a statewide pilot demonstration cannot be the only choices sults are sustained over time. We need to of FGC. The original FGC pilot program is know, for example, whether the place- given the complexity of now standard programming with long-term ments that appear stable six months after investments in five of the six administrative child welfare cases today. the conference continue to be stable and regions, each of which have allocated regional safe environments for the child in the budgets to fund one to six FGC facilitators long-term. Few FGC studies have exam- per region. The state child welfare agency long term family permanence and parental ined longer-term outcomes. One excep- connections. A description of the model, contracts with the University of Washington tion to this is the work of Pennell and to convene facilitators from around the state including its origins, will be presented fol- Burford (2000) with families experienc- lowed by an evaluation that looks at both the on a monthly basis in order to support the ing domestic violence in Newfoundland exchange of best practice knowledge and to immediate and long-term benefits of FGC and Labrador. In follow-up interviews and for 70 families. provide direction for the future of FGCs. progress reports that took place an aver- At a later date, the Stuart Foundation of WHAT IS FAMILY GROUP CONFERENCING? age of one year post-conference, the au- Washington and California added funds for thors found that FGCs did a better job an evaluation component. Family group conferencing (FGC) is a par- than regular case planning approaches in ticipatory approach to case planning that was promoting family unity, increasing safety In the state of Washington, FGC consists originally developed by the Maori people of for all family members, and reducing re- of a three-stage process where-by families New Zealand, in response to concerns that ports of child maltreatment and mother/ assume a central role in planning for their the child welfare system was removing Maori wife abuse. The study found that overall children within the mandated authority of children from their homes and cultural ties levels of abuse had decreased significantly the child protection agency. The FGC at a disproportional rate. Based upon the for the families involved with the project process used in Washington State, as de- success of this approach in New Zealand, and increased moderately for the compari- scribed in the next section, reflects those FGC has been utilized as a case planning son group.
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