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Home > Achieving and Maintaining Permanency > Family Reunification > Engaging Parents in Reunification
Engaging Parents in Reunification
Reunification of children with their families is best done with the involvement of children’s parents and other family members. Working closely with the children’s parents embodies family-centered practice and can facilitate the return home more quickly than if parents are not engaged. Resources include State and local examples.
Crossing Bridges and Fostering Change: Foster Parents Speak
New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children (2004)
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Foster parents discuss their role in promoting family reunification for the children in their care. Topics include strategies for developing relationships with birth parents, visitation, and transitions from foster care to reunification.
Engaging Parents as a Path to Reunification: Surfacing Values and Dismantling Assumptions
Cortese, Krupat, & Richter
ABA Child Law Practice, 24(6), 2005
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Questions child welfare practitioners should consider to acknowledge and dismantle assumptions that may be undermining their ability to treat each family as unique and engage parents in reunification efforts.
Family Reunification: What the Evidence Shows
Family reunification, the process of returning children in temporary out-of-home care to their families of origin, is the most common goal and outcome for children in out-of-home care. This issue brief examines States? successes and challenges related to family reunification, as documented in the Federal Child and Family Services Reviews; reviews research regarding factors contributing to timely, stable reunifications; offers specific program examples that illustrate these factors; and uses all of the above to suggest several guiding principles for practice in this critical area of permanency planning.
Overcoming Hopelessness and Social Isolation: The ENGAGE Model for Working With Neglecting Families Toward Permanence
Petras, Massat, & Essex
Child Welfare, 81(2), 2002
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Describes the ENGAGE model, which incorporates creative client engagement, assessment of family needs, mutual goal setting, goal achievement, termination, and aftercare for achieving permanency.
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State and local examples
Birth Parents and the Reunification Process: A Study of the Mendocino County Model (PDF - 208 KB)
Center for Social Services Research (2004)
In Mendocino County, California, all families whose children have been removed are referred by the court to a local family center, where they are offered weekly groups, parenting classes, and visitation services. The findings of this study suggest that the Family Center service model holds promise as a supportive intervention for birth parents.
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