Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast – FGDM – Family Group Conferencing (FGM) TRANSCRIPT Presenters: Female Narrator; Tom Oates, Child Welfare Information Gateway; Julie Treinen, Arizona’s Children; Michele Schmidt, LeCroy & Milligan 00:00:00 [Music Introduction] FEMALE NARRATOR [00:00:03]: This is the Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast, a place for those who care about strengthening families and protecting children. You’ll hear about the innovations, emerging trends and success stories across child welfare direct from those striving to make a difference. This is your place for new ideas and information to support your work to improve the lives of children, youth, and families. TOM OATES [00:00:33]: Family Group Decision Making is being applied across agencies to engage and empower those with a close connection to a family or child being served by child welfare agencies. Now, the group - which doesn’t have to be limited to family members - is given a primary role in case planning and taking the identified steps and actions to hopefully lead to better outcomes for the children and family involved. [00:00:56]: Hey everyone, it’s Tom Oates from Child Welfare Information Gateway, and Family Group Decision Making, while being applied by many agencies and organizations, is being applied in different ways and different methods across the nation. So, today we’re gonna explore how one method - The Family Group Conferencing Model - is being used in Arizona. [00:01:16]: Now in 2015, the Children’s Bureau awarded three-year grants under the Building the Evidence for Family Group Decision Making in Child Welfare Grant Cluster. Now, the goal of the grants is to build credible evidence of effective Family Group Decision Making programs and improving outcomes. Now, grantees are also required to employ a what they’re calling a highly rigorous local evaluation with the intent to inform both project implementation and produce of how well the interventions and actions actually achieve outcomes related to safety, permanency and well-being. [00:01:52]: One of the grants was awarded to Arizona Kinship Support Services, which is a part of Arizona’s Children - a not-for-profit organization providing child welfare and behavioral health services in about fifteen counties in Arizona. Now, the folks from Arizona Kinship Support Services provide more than just family group conferencing, and we’re gonna get to all of that - including how they’ve incorporated the four-stage model - and we’ll also dive deep into what they’re local evaluation entails. [00:02:22]: So, I got the chance to talk with Julie Treinen, she’s the program director for Arizona’s Kinship Support Services and Michele Schmidt from LeCroy and Milligan, and they are the evaluation partners. So take notice to how the evaluations and the evidence they intend to gather will have a wider implication on how Family Group Decision Making is perceived with specific reference to the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse. So, besides evaluation, we’ll also get into some of the key insights Julie and Michele feel are the must-haves to achieve outcomes and which families may be more open to participating. We’ll come back after the conversation and I’ll point you to resources and other materials for additional context regarding Family Group Conferencing and Family Group Decision Making overall. But for now, here’s our conversation with Julie Treinen and Michele Schmidt. Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast – FGDM – Family Group Conferencing (FGM) TRANSCRIPT [00:03:15]: Julie and Michele, welcome to the Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast. So, Julie, I want to start with you, here, just first give me an overview on the big sense of what Arizona Kinship Support Services provides, because I know it’s a wide array of services. JULIE TREINEN [00:03:29]: At Kinship Support Services, we serve any kin caregiver caring for their relatives’ children and we try to meet any need that they have. So, the navigators work with the families to try to identify their needs and then we try to connect them to services that will help them overcome those barriers. For folks that have yet to become involved with the Child Welfare Agency, services that they most need are legal services, they need legal assistance to obtain a legal relationship, legal guardianship to the kid in their care. [00:04:08]: And for those families that are formal families - that is they are, the children are in the custody of Child Welfare Agency, they need a lot of information and assistance in understanding the Child Welfare Agency and what it is that they need to do and then finding a whole array of services to help them meet those needs. TOM OATES [00:04:31]: There’s a wide array of partnerships and services you guys have to juggle - of course one of them is, you know, Family Group Decision Making, and you guys have made the choice to follow the Family Group Conferencing Model, you know, developed over by the folks at the KEMPE Center and that four stage model. What was it that made you choose that model and what made you see the need for Family Group Conferencing within your array of services? JULIE TREINEN [00:05:01]: Family. We chose this specific model, mostly because it’s very family-driven as opposed to agency or state-driven. The Family Group Conference that you convene is in the driver’s seat as to what the plan should be, and the Family Group Conferencing Model also allows some private family time. So the family gets a chance to discuss how they might accomplish these things without the watchful eyes of agencies that might inhibit their open and honest discussion in the family. TOM OATES [00:05:36]: So, the four stage model - the referral to hold the conference, the preparation and the planning, then the conference itself, followed by the fourth stage, the post-conference events and planning - how is your staff implementing that within the structure that you have, and frankly, the resources that you have? JULIE TREINEN [00:05:57]: Right now, we're in the middle of a randomized control trial, so any family that comes to us in need of kinship navigation services is invited to participate in that study. And then based on their random assignment, those that are chosen to do Family Group Conferencing, they’re immediately connected with their Family Group Coordinator. So, at the very initial referral stage, the Family Group Coordinator and the Navigator are meeting with the family to do a full assessment of their, of the family’s needs with the Caregiver and other participating family. Then, they begin the process of preparation - finding those other supportive family members, some informal supports that the family uses that may not be relative, church members, organizations, things like that the family works with and feels comfortable with. And then once they’ve found all the participants, then the Family Group Coordinator begins the preparation and working one on one with each of those family members to focus on the point of the meeting, which is to provide safety and stability for the children in care. And then what each of those family or support partners can bring to the family in order to support the plan. Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast – FGDM – Family Group Conferencing (FGM) TRANSCRIPT [00:07:28]: Then, they find the date and they schedule the Family Group Conference and they all come together. The professionals say these are the needs that we have - whether it’s child welfare bottom lines on what will be acceptable in the plan, that Navigator talks about these are the needs that you’ve identified and here are some professional services, we try to give them a menu of options so that they can choose from those that fit with their family and their family culture. [00:08:02]: And then, after that presentation, all the professionals leave the room and allow the family, in private, to hash out how they’re going to make that plan work. And then, at the end of the conference, then all the professionals return, the family submits their plan, and you know, if there’s child welfare involved, they have to approve the plan, make sure it meets all of their needs for the safety of the child. [00:08:30]: Once the family puts the plan, once the plan is approved, the family puts the plan into action and that may be collaboration with the Navigator, receiving referrals, but often times, it’s direct help, Auntie agrees to do this to support, Uncle agrees to do that. And so we want to make sure that everybody’s doing their part that they agreed to. So, the family in the after conference events really consist of a lot of the Family Group Coordinator checking in with family members – ‘how are you progressing on your plan? Are there issues that are keeping you from implementing your plan?’ And they discuss that in terms of do you just need more time, or is this plan not working and do we need to convene a follow up meeting to adjust the plan so that it can work out so that they family can actually follow that plan. TOM OATES [00:09:31]: You know, with the Navigators and the role that they play in supporting the family to make their own plan, as you mentioned, the family gets together on their own and starts to make the plan that then, off course, has to go through approval.