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January 27, 2017

This edition of the Foster Care Roundup offers insights about foster parent recruitment and retention efforts at ACS and New York agencies, and includes a guide on how to better support foster parents and caregivers in New York.

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ACS UPDATE

A New ACS Initiative to Transform Caregiving

Eden Hauslaib and Julie Farber of ACS for the Foster Care Roundup

Learn more about the newly launched Home Away From Home initiative from ACS in our Q&A with Eden Hauslaib and Julie Farber. Designed to improve foster and adoptive parent recruitment, training, coaching, support and retention, Home Away From Home is a multi-stage effort to increase the number of quality foster parents caring for children in foster care in New York City.

One key goal: to increase foster parent peer support in order to improve the quality of caregiving and retain more of our foster parents. One surprising fact in NYC is that foster parents may live in the same neighborhood yet not be connected to each other because they are associated with different foster care agencies. ACS’s fix? To advance hub models that transcend the traditional agency “ownership” of foster parents.

Read More About Home Away From Home

+ A blueprint to revitalize recruitment from OCFS.
+ "Kinship Caregivers and the Child Welfare System," a factsheet for families.
+ The New York State Kinship Navigator.
+ Strategic planning resources in recruitment of foster/adoptive parents.

RESOURCES

A New Vision for Foster Parenting
Annie E. Casey Foundation

This report explores how public agencies can reimagine foster parenting and provides practical ways to attract more volunteers; strengthen the commitment of existing caregivers; and strengthen the relationship between public agencies and foster parents and caregivers.

Download the Report

+ A tool for agencies to better estimate their foster home needs.
+ Using social media for parent recruitment efforts.
+ Working to reach LGBTQ foster parents with the Human Rights Campaign.

FAMILY SUPPORT

5 Ways to Support Foster Parents in New York
Richard Heyl de Ortiz for the Foster Care Roundup

Much misunderstood and sometimes maligned, foster parenting is a key component of our child welfare system.

In general, it is better for children to remain safely with their families. Removal from the family is an incredibly traumatic experience for most children. Still, the fact remains that there will always be circumstances in which foster care is in the best interest of the child. Acknowledging this, we must support foster parents. They are key to healing and nurturing our state’s most traumatized children.

Foster parenting is not for the faint of heart. Every foster parent has been tested. Every foster parent has felt the joy in helping a child. Sadly, many foster parents have also felt alone and unsupported.

We can change this. I propose five ways that we can better support New York’s foster parents.

Richard Heyl de Ortiz is the Executive Director of the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York.

Read More

+ A survey from AFFCNY to share with foster parents and caregivers.

BEST PRACTICES

The Role of Youth Voice in Recruitment and Retention
Susan Grundberg for the Foster Care Roundup

You Gotta Believe envisions a day in New York City when Nobody Ages Out. To that end, YGB now has a team of Nobody Ages Out Advocates for Youth who are all veterans of the foster care system.

YGB’s parent preparation classes now have Advocates who take an active role in educating our potential foster/adoptive parents throughout the MAPP process, as well as participation in training for current foster parents. They are able to provide profound insights about what and why children coming out of foster care do what they do – and good ways that parents can help them heal.

Many agencies report that a major barrier to permanency is that their youth don’t want a family. When we implemented our Youth Advocate team, we expected most of the Advocates’ work to be focused on peer advocacy. Indeed, when they connect with groups of youth in care, it is almost magical: Our Advocates teach everyone that if you use the right language and stay away from the “A” (adoption) word, most youth admit they do want families and begin to open up to the idea. But we have also been consistently amazed by the impact that these Advocates have had on changing the hearts and minds of both workers and potential parents — so much so that they are now embedded in everything we do.

Susan Grundberg is the Executive Director/CEO of You Gotta Believe.

PARENT VOICES

Insights From a Longtime Foster Parent
Elvira Northington for the Foster Care Roundup

Elvira Northington has been a foster parent in upstate New York for 20 years. In those 20 years, she's adopted five children from foster care. Today, she’s the president of a foster parent support group that meets monthly in Buffalo. We asked her to talk about her experiences and how she became an advocate for foster parents.

She talks about the challenges facing foster parents, and how agencies can transform to meet the needs of parents.

Read More

+ A foster mother describes the loss of a foster child after 11 months of care, and finally being ready to take in another.
+ Answering the call to become a foster parent.
+ What no one tells you about foster parenting.

QUICK HITS

+ An app for adoption? Does this fill a need or is it disturbing?
+ Get to know FosterPort, a new information portal on issues impacting older youth in foster care from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
+ Insights on what a Trump presidency might mean for child welfare.
+ Firsthand stories of foster care, a special report from Youth Radio.
+ The new normal: "53 percent of African-American children will be subjected to a child abuse investigation before they turn 18."

We're on Twitter. Follow us @CareRoundup.

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