Kin-First Courtrooms: Engaging Youth and Families

Engaging Youth

Seen, Heard, and Engaged: Children in Dependency Court hearings

NCJFCJ

Tags: Legal resources for youth, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This technical assistance bulletin was designed to provide information, guidance, and aspirational practice recommendations to dependency courts and dependency court judges with regard to bringing children to court for hearings related to their own dependency cases. It is the policy of the NCJFCJ that children of all ages be brought to court, unless the judge decides it is not safe or appropriate based on information provided by case participants. This brief includes information on best practice support for bringing children to court, the legal framework supporting children’s attendance at and participation in hearings, and the appendices provide concrete tools which will enable courts to successfully engage children of all ages in the hearing process.

Foster Children’s Expressions of Ambiguous Loss 

American Journal of Family Therapy

Tags: Harm of separation, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This research article seeks to help professionals and those working with the foster care system to understand the experiences and challenges foster youth face. Understanding ambiguous loss can assist professionals to recognize and understand the unique emotions and behaviors associated with losses that are unresolvable and to use this lens when working with youth and families.

Ambigous Loss Haunts Foster and Adoption Children

North American Council on Adoptable Children

Tags: Harm of separation, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
Ambiguous loss—a feeling of grief or distress combined with confusion about the lost person or relationship—is a normal aspect of adoption. Parents who adopt children with special needs may feel ambiguous loss related to what the child could have been had he not been exposed to toxic chemicals in utero, or abused and neglected after birth. Birth parents experience loss when a child is removed from their home. For children placed in foster care, this type of loss tends to happen over and over again, and is incredibly hard to process. To help children better manage these repeated traumas, foster and adoptive parents, as well as child welfare workers, must be sensitive to the role ambiguous loss plays in foster and adopted children’s behavior.

Recommendations for Improving Permanency and Well-Being

U.S. HHS, Administration for Children & Families

Tags: Engaging youth, Benefits of Kinship, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
A resource for agencies and the court which includes roundtable discussions with youth with lived experience who say that we cannot achieve successful legal permanency without relational permanency. It highlights that states need to start intentionally exploring how to evaluate the relationships youth already have rather than just focusing on finding legal placement options. This begins with delivering services that allow youth opportunities to develop their existing relationships, and listening to the youth and the families they come from. Courts play a critical role in ensuring that ongoing searches for kin are occurring, that every effort is made to achieve permanency with kin, and that they are provided with the supportive services they need.

Youth Engagement in Court Proceedings

Ohio Supreme Court

Tags: Engaging youth, Benefits of Kinship, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This toolkit is designed to provide an overview of the recommendations and best practices that courts may use to engage children in hearings. It provides the rationale, based on research and legislation, behind the recommendations. Finally, it provides a tip sheet for youth, to help them become familiar with the court process and let them know how they may be able to participate.

Engaging Fathers & Paternal Relatives

What about the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate and Involve Non-Resident Fathers

U.S. HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This study documents that nonresident fathers of children in foster care are not often involved in case planning efforts and nearly half are never contacted by the child welfare agency during their child's stay in foster care. By not reaching out to fathers, caseworkers may overlook potential social connections and resources that could help to achieve permanency for the child. The ASPE Research Summary describes the findings of a study that sought to assess typical child welfare practice with respect to nonresident fathers of children in foster care. Engaging these fathers is important for the potential benefit of a child-father relationship (when such a relationship does not pose a risk to the child's safety or well-being), and also may be helpful in expediting permanent placement decisions and gaining access to resources for the child. g the reasonable efforts to prevent removal and facilitate reunification tool.

Best Practice Guide for Engaging Fathers

Ohio Department of Job and Family Services

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This Best Practice Guide contains the subcommittee’s suggestions for ways agencies can include fathers earlier and more effectively in each case, to ensure the best outcomes for children. We know that agencies have different levels of paternal engagement, and that changing agency culture and practice takes time and effort. This guide is designed to meet agencies where they are in that process.

Ohio Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families

Ohio Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
Ambiguous loss—a feeling of grief or distress combined with confusion about the lost person or relationship—is a normal aspect of adoption. Parents who adopt children with special needs may feel ambiguous loss related to what the child could have been had he not been exposed to toxic chemicals in utero, or abused and neglected after birth. Birth parents experience loss when a child is removed from their home. For children placed in foster care, this type of loss tends to happen over and over again, and is incredibly hard to process. To help children better manage these repeated traumas, foster and adoptive parents, as well as child welfare workers, must be sensitive to the role ambiguous loss plays in foster and adopted children’s behavior.

PACT (Parents and Children Together) Study

Office of Planning Research & Evaluation, ACF

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
The PACT RF impact study was a large-scale, random assignment examination of four federally funded RF programs that received grants in 2011. This report discusses the impacts of those programs on fathers’ parenting, relationships, economic stability, and well-being about one year after the fathers enrolled.

National Fatherhood Initiative

Fatherhood.org

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
National Fatherhood Initiatives' research and evidence-based programs and services offer the tools and training to be more father-inclusive.

National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse

U.S. HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation

Tags: Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse is an Office of Family Assistance (OFA) funded national resource for fathers, practitioners, programs/Federal grantees, states, and the public at-large who are serving or interested in supporting strong fathers and families.

Family Finding Resources

Search, Engage, Explore, and Kinnect (SEEK) Resources

Kinnect

Tags: Family search and engagement (FSE), Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This packet contains valuable resources for locating family as well as guidance on using social media as a search tool.

Evaluation of Los Angeles' Up-Front Family Finding Program

Child Trends

Tags: Family search and engagement (FSE), Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This brief provides insight into how kinship caregivers help preserve family ties and provides children with a sense of family support and how their care also saves society more than $6.5 billion each year in formal foster care costs. The study seeks to determine the needs of these kinship care providers and how policy and practice can help meet these financial and other needs.

Connect Our Kids Overview

Kinnect

Tags: Family search and engagement (FSE), Engaging families, Legal professionals, CASAs/GALs, Child welfare professionals, Families, Youth

Summary
This resource provides an overview of Connect Our Kids, which provides freely accessible modern technology to help professionals find loving extended family members and build social capital for vulnerable children and their families.

Join us in this work!

Sign up here to receive e-mail updates about this project and even join a committee if you'd like. If you have any questions, please contact Alyse Almadani at alyse.almadani@kinnectohio.org.