Concurrent Planning for Timely Permanency for Children - Kentucky

Defining Concurrent Planning

Citation: Admin. Regs. Tit. 922, § 1:140

'Concurrent planning' means the cabinet simultaneously plans for the following:

• The return of a child in the custody of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to the child's parent
• Another permanency goal for the child if return to parent is not achieved within 15 of the last 22 months, in accordance with 42 U.S.C. §671(a)(16)

State Approaches to Concurrent Planning

Citation: Rev. Stat. § 620.350(2)(b); Admin. Regs. Tit. 922, § 1:140; Stds. of Prac. Man. § 4.18

Upon notice from any emergency medical services provider or hospital staff that a newborn infant has been abandoned at a hospital, the cabinet shall immediately seek an order for emergency custody of the infant.

Upon the infant's release from the hospital, the cabinet shall place the child in a foster home approved by the cabinet to provide concurrent-planning placement services. As used in this paragraph, 'concurrent-planning placement services' means the foster family shall work with the cabinet on reunification with the birth family, if known, and shall seek to adopt the infant if reunification cannot be accomplished.

In regulation: Concurrent planning shall be considered during development of the case permanency plan and at the 6-month case review.

In policy: For a child in out-of-home care, the caseworker and the cabinet are responsible for creating a case plan that demonstrates reasonable efforts to obtain a safe, permanent placement that permits the child to exit foster care in a reasonable timeframe.

Key strategies for the achievement of an appropriate case plan include the engagement of family members and use of a family team meeting model, when appropriate; implementation of concurrent case plan goals, when appropriate; and the development of family-level and individual-level objectives that identify key benchmarks for the evaluation of the family's progress.

When the child cannot return home immediately or be safely maintained in the home, alternative permanency goals will be considered. The caseworker, for example, may choose 'return to the parent' as a permanency goal and at the same time have an alternate permanency objective and tasks in the out-of-home care section of the case plan.

Children with a goal of planned permanent living arrangement should continue to receive concurrent-planning services. Intensive ongoing efforts to return the child to the home or secure placement with a fit and willing relative, legal guardian, fictive kin, or adoptive parent, including efforts that utilize search technology to find the birth family, should continue.