Family to Family

This family-centered, neighborhood-based foster care approach has been the primary vehicle for child welfare system reform across the nation. At its core, Family to Family has four basic principles:

• A child’s safety is paramount.
• Children belong in families.
• Families need strong communities.
• Public child welfare systems need partnerships with the community and other systems to achieve strong outcomes for children.

I think that Family to Family has been the single most effective practice change tool in California. I have a lot of admiration for the work. I think that because Family to Family has focused on a shared learning approach with counties and looked at how to improve practice by means of their strategies, focusing on community and consumer engagement, that those strategies have really changed both practice and outcomes.

Stuart Foundation Child Welfare Program Evaluation 2008

Strategies

Family to Family relies on four core strategies for reforming child welfare systems. Each strategy represents good practice on its own, but it is the joint and mutually reinforcing effects of all the strategies together that produce the strongest impact.

• Building Community Partnerships.  Building relationships with a wide range of community organizations and leaders in neighborhoods in which child protection referral rates are high, and collaborating to create an environment that supports families involved in the child welfare system.
• Team Decision Making.  Involving not just foster parents and caseworkers, but also birth parents and community members, in all placement decisions to ensure a network of support for children and the adults who care for them.
• Resource Family Recruitment, Development, and Support.  Finding and maintaining foster and kinship homes that can support children and families in their own neighborhoods.
• Self Evaluation.  Collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about key Family to Family outcomes by teams of analysts, data managers, front-line managers and staff, and community partners.

Impact

Approximately 87% of the 72,147 children in California child welfare supervised foster care are living in a Family to Family county. Between 2002 and 2006, counties participating in the Family to Family initiative experienced the following improved outcomes:

• Los Angeles increased the rate of reunification within 12 months of entry to foster care by 35.1%
• Orange reduced initial placement into group care or shelter by 29.3%
• Alameda increased the rate of all siblings placed together by 22.7%
• Fresno decreased the rate of rentry to foster care within 12 months of reunification by 13.3%
• Riverside reduced the recurrence of maltreatment within 12 months by 18%