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Home > Family Reunification: What the Evidence Shows
Family Reunification: What the Evidence Shows
Series: Issue Briefs
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Author(s):
Child Welfare Information Gateway
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Year Published: 2006
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The Child and Family Services Reviews and Family Reunification
Final Reports from the Federal Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) present results and discussion for each State regarding its conformance with child safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes.2 In the first full round of 52 reviews, 19 States met the national standard for reunification, which states, "76.2 percent of all children who were reunified went home in less than 12 months" (Children's Bureau, 2004c).
No State was found to be in conformance with the first permanency outcome, "Children have permanency and stability in their living situations." However, 12 States received a rating of Strength on the indicator related to achievement of a child's goal of reunification, guardianship, or placement with relatives.3 A Children's Bureau (2004c) summary and analysis of the 52 Final Reports found that the following factors had a significant association with a rating of Strength on this indicator:
- The stability of foster care placement
- Visiting with parents and siblings in foster care
- The needs of and services for the child, parents, and foster parents
- Child and family involvement in case planning
- Worker visits with the child
- Worker visits with the parents
Further review of the States' Final Reports yields additional details about these and other factors' relationships to the achievement of timely, stable family reunification. The factors related to family engagement, assessment and case planning, and service delivery, as well as a number of systemic issues, shed light on States' successes and challenges in this area.
Family Engagement
The CFSRs indicated that a number of family engagement activities contribute to the success of family reunification efforts. Effective family engagement activities include involving birth families in planning and decision-making, encouraging foster parent support of the birth parents, and facilitating visits between children in foster care with their parents. States' experiences in facilitating family engagement are summarized below:
- At least eight Final Reports (IA, KY, NH, OH, OK, OR, RI, WY) mention the use of some type of family team meetings (e.g., Family Group Conferencing, Family Group Decision Making) to facilitate reunification efforts. These strategies promote active involvement of both birth parents, extended family, and others to achieve permanency for children.
- At least nine Final Reports (KY, LA, MN, NH, NM, OH, OR, PA, SC) state that foster parents' support of contact between children and birth parents, and the foster parents' direct support of birth parents (e.g., mentoring), facilitates achievement of reunification goals.
- At least six States' Final Reports (CA, KS, MI, NV, PA, SC) indicate that increasing the frequency of visits leading up to reunification helps to facilitate achievement of this goal and decreases re-entries to foster care.
Many States' Final Reports also address problems in these areas that negatively impact the achievement of timely, stable reunifications:
- One of the most common issues is a lack of parent involvement in case planning and decision-making, including a lack of caseworker communication with birth parents regarding expectations.
- The lack of involvement of fathers poses a distinct challenge, and States' Final Reports point to such possible causes as a lack of agency effort in identifying, locating, contacting, and attempting to involve fathers and paternal relatives. Sonenstein, Malm, and Billing (2002) report three reasons for lack of involvement of fathers, especially noncustodial fathers, in case planning: caseworker and systemic bias, mothers' gatekeeping, and the characteristics of noncustodial fathers, such as high rates of incarceration.
- The Final Reports often cite a lack of caseworker support for and assistance to birth parents in their efforts to achieve the goal of reunification.
- At least 17 percent of the Final Reports also indicate that visits between children in foster care and their birth parents were not sufficient to promote the goal of reunification. Reasons cited include foster care placements far from the birth families' homes and inadequate resources (such as transportation and supervision) to facilitate more frequent visits.
Assessment and Case Planning
Adequately assessing the strengths and needs of children and families, planning to build on those strengths and address specific needs, and finally, carrying out those plans are all critical activities to the achievement of a family's reunification goals. A summary of States' experiences in assessing the strengths and needs of families is below:
- At least four Final Reports (KY, MI, NH, PR) specifically connect the implementation of initial assessments to the success of reunification efforts.
- Twice that many States (MI, NH, NM, NV, PA, SC, VA, WA) report that risk or safety assessments conducted prior to reunification help ensure safe, timely reunification decisions and minimize both the risk of harm to children and re-entries to foster care.
However, challenges related to assessment and case planning are more commonly noted in the Final Reports than are successes:
- At least 30 States were found to have had problems conducting adequate assessments to determine the needs of children, parents, and foster parents (Children's Bureau, 2004c).
- A number of Final Reports also indicate that case plans often are "boiler plate" and do not address the individual needs of families, and that case plans often lack clear objectives.
- A few Final Reports specifically mention that the lack of risk and safety assessments prior to reunification increases the risk of harm to children and subsequent re-entries to foster care.
- Many Final Reports cite child and parent problems that impede reunification efforts and contribute to foster care re-entries. Parental substance abuse is the problem most often cited; other problems include child behavior problems, parental mental health concerns, and parents' lack of cooperation with service plans.
Service Delivery
Targeted services that meet the individualized needs of children and families are key to achieving family reunification and ensuring children's safety. Issues reported by States related to the delivery of appropriate services include the following:
- At least 10 Final Reports (AZ, HI, IL, ND, NJ, OK, PR, RI, SC, WI) mention the availability and coordination of specific services as factors important to the achievement of reunification. These include in-home services, concrete services such as housing and food, mental health and substance abuse services, culturally competent services, comprehensive wraparound services, and coordination or collocation of service providers.
- Many more Final Reports cite problems with service delivery, including a lack of specific services, a lack of transportation to services, long waiting lists, and inconsistent service accessibility in all jurisdictions, with rural areas having the most difficulties. Problems with housing and substance abuse, mental health, and culturally competent services were most often cited as specifically impeding efforts to reunify families.
Many States cite post-reunification services as particularly critical. For example:
- At least half of the Final Reports (AL, AR, CA, CO, CT, GA, ID, IN, LA, MD, MI, MS, MT, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI) specifically cite the provision of post-reunification services as a key to reducing the risk of harm to children, repeat maltreatment, and re-entries to foster care. A number of these reports discuss the length of time post-reunification services are provided (ranging from 3 months to as long as needed). Reports indicate that continued monitoring of families supports their participation in such services.
- Specific post-reunification services that contribute to positive outcomes include in-home services, mental health or counseling services, substance abuse services, parenting support, child care, concrete services such as housing and financial assistance, and transportation.
- Many Final Reports specifically tie poor post-reunification services to an increased risk of harm to children after reunification, repeat maltreatment, and higher numbers of re-entries to foster care. Common problems include service disruptions, the lack of availability of services in all areas, services not available at the intensity or duration that families need them, and the high costs of needed services.
Systemic Issues
The CFSR Final Reports mention a number of systemic issues that contribute both positively and negatively to the achievement of timely, stable reunifications. These include issues related to funding, courts, and staffing.
Funding. Positive contributions of various funding strategies are cited in at least seven Final Reports as supporting reunification efforts. These strategies include increased funding for reunification (IL), dedicated reunification funds (MI), flexibility in the use of funds (LA, UT), blended funding streams (PA, TX), and financial incentives for contractors (NY).
Courts. Positive contributions related to the courts are mentioned in three Final Reports. Louisiana reports on the success of cooperation between the courts and child welfare agencies. West Virginia reports that court tracking of permanency timeframes facilitates reunifications. Virginia reports that court monitoring of families after reunification helps ensure child safety. Court-related issues noted as impeding reunification efforts include continuances and crowded court dockets delaying reunification, judges extending the timeframe for reunification beyond the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) guidelines, and courts ordering reunifications in cases where agency staff do not feel the family is ready.
Staffing. Staffing problems that reportedly impede reunification efforts include high rates of staff turnover, inexperienced staff, and high caseloads. These problems may result in insufficient worker visits both with foster children and birth parents, insufficient monitoring and support of parents' service participation and progress toward goal achievement, and longer timeframes to achieve reunification goals as each new worker starts over.
Finally, policies regarding timeliness to reunification are cited as a concern in many State Final Reports. A few States report that while the time taken to reunification is longer than allowed for in the national standard, this caution results in fewer re-entries to foster care. Correspondingly, other States are concerned that shorter times to reunifications are resulting in higher re-entries because families are sometimes reunited before risk and safety issues are fully resolved. Almost half of the Final Reports state that the goal of reunification is often kept too long even when it seems unlikely that it will be achieved (e.g., when the parents have made little or no progress on service plan tasks).
2 The Child and Family Services Reviews are designed to enable the Children's Bureau to ensure that State child welfare agency practice is in conformity with Federal child welfare requirements, to determine what is actually happening to children and families as they are engaged in State child welfare services, and to assist States to enhance their capacity to help children and families achieve positive outcomes. For more information about the CFSR process, visit the Children's Bureau website at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/cwmonitoring/index.htm#cfsr. back
3 This indicator was added in the second year of reviews and was therefore applicable for only 35 States. back
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