Permanency planning with a difference

Permanency planning. Concurrent planning. Big words to describe a simple concept… a child and a forever family.

A new approach to permanency planning

One of the most traumatic things children can experience is being removed from their homes and families…and from everyone and everything familiar to them. Long stays in foster care, moves from one home to another, only make the emotional damage greater.

Beech Brook’s Two Ways Home Program was launched in 2000 to test a new approach to permanency planning, the process of getting children back with their families or into new lifelong families, quickly and safely.

What is concurrent planning?

Concurrent planning means working toward different outcomes at the same time: reunification with the birth parent as well as another potential permanent placement. This planning helps pave the way home as quickly as possible, whether it is returning home with the birth parent, with a kinship care giver through legal custody or adoption or another adoptive family.

What makes Two Ways Home different?

With Two Ways Home, the quest for a permanent solution begins within six months after a child has been removed from his/her home. Traditionally this search does not start until permanent custody has been granted, a process that can often take a year or more. The Two Ways Home staff works quickly to locate kin and involves all family members in the decision-making process regarding the child’s placement.

What kinds of families are involved?

Returning children to their birth parent is always the preferred choice, as long as the parents can make the changes they need to make to raise their children safely. Often these families are struggling with serious problems such as drug/alcohol abuse, mental health issues and domestic violence. Although the staff works with the family to find solutions to these problems, the need for an alternate plan is critical.

Who are the kids?

The children referred to Two Ways Home are generally age12 and under, although sometimes older children may be part of a sibling group. Keeping brothers and sisters together and keeping relationships with relatives intact – even when a return to the birth parent is not possible – is a high priority.

Flexible services for different needs

Another advantage of the Two Ways Home program is a more flexible and intense range of services. Unlike traditional programs in which different workers are assigned to birth, foster and adoptive parents, Two Ways Home assigns one caseworker to work with the birth family, potential adoptive family, foster family and extended family members.

Smaller caseloads allow for frequent contact between everyone involved to help determine the best outcome for the child. Through this close contact, caseworkers get to know families well and are more successful at locating relatives and others who care about the child’s future.

Innovative tools such as the “Potential for Reunification Assessment Tool” help determine the birth family’s strengths and weaknesses early on. Other tools, such as genograms, help identify possible kin and reveal other important factors in the child’s life.

Family decision-making meetings with the caseworker and all possible caregivers help determine the best placement plan and support systems that will be needed to keep the child safe. When reunification is not an option, these meetings can help the birth parents come to terms with the decision.

Supporting the process

Once the decision is made, the Two Ways Home staff will support all parties through the legal process, whether it is reunification, legal custody or adoption. Kin care givers are supported through the training process and court appearances. Home studies are completed for those adopting. All families reunified, transfer of custody or adoption are provided post permanency services - which may range form linkage and referrals with community resources to supplying the child with basic needs – are part of the process.

Two Ways Home…a new path to forever families

Beech Brook’s Two Ways Home program was established as a three-year pilot project funded by a federal Adoption Opportunities Grant. At the end of the grant period, results showed that Two Ways Home was making a difference in getting children into homes quickly and safely. Now a permanent program at Beech Brook, the program is building on these successes and continuing to seek new ways to keep children in families.

For more information, contact Beech Brook’s Two Ways Home Program at adoption@beechbrook.org.