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Home > Concurrent Planning > Concurrent Planning: What the Evidence Shows
Concurrent Planning: What the Evidence Shows
Issue Brief
Concurrent Planning: What the Evidence Shows Concurrent planning is an approach that seeks to eliminate delays in attaining permanent family placements for children in the foster care system. Concurrent planning involves considering all reasonable options for permanency at the earliest possible point following a child's entry into foster care and concurrently pursuing those that will best serve the child's needs. Typically the primary plan is reunification with the child's family of origin. In concurrent planning, an alternative permanency goal is pursued at the same time (Katz, 1999; Lutz, 2000). Evaluations of some early concurrent planning efforts suggested that they led to earlier permanence for children. The practice did not gain general acceptance, however, due primarily to opposition in the courts and among parents' attorneys, who saw the early development of an alternative permanency plan as being in conflict with agencies' genuine pursuit of family reunification (Katz, 1999; Munroe, 1997). The Federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 paved the way for the legal sanction of concurrent planning in States and the formalization of the practice in child welfare agencies (Schene, 2001). The approach is now encouraged as a logical alternative to the sequential case planning that had become common practice following the passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. That practice, which required a preferred permanent plan to be ruled out before an alternative was developed, was believed to contribute to long lengths of stay in out-of-home care (Lutz, 2000). This issue brief examines the following questions:
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