Goal is family unity

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Fourth in a series

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According to The Children’s Bureau, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Foster care is a temporary solution.” 

Not only is foster care temporary, it is a solution arrived at only by a thorough and complicated process that always keeps family reunification as the ultimate goal. 

Most families’ involvement with the foster care system begins after a report of suspected child abuse or neglect is filed with Child Protective Services. Anyone can make such a report, but most are filed by “mandatory reporters,” people such as teachers who are required by law to report their suspicions. 

After CPS receives a report, the case is “screened in” if there is sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation or “screened out” if the situation does not meet the definition of abuse, neglect, or dependency.

If a case is screened in, CPS then investigates and determines whether a case is unsubstantiated or substantiated. If a report is substantiated, the agency may then initiate a court action if necessary to keep the child safe. However, involving the court does not necessarily mean children are put into foster care.

A judge may order parents to receive services that will alleviate the danger to the child. Whether or not the courts become involved, many cases end with families receiving the child welfare or community-based services necessary to preserve the family.

If the child has been seriously harmed or is at risk of being seriously harmed, the court may order the child removed from the home and placed with relatives, into foster care, or, more rarely, into a group home. According to Cris Weatherford, director of Graham County DSS, removing children from their homes is “the last thing we want to do, but at times it is necessary to ensure the safety of children.” 

When children are removed from their homes, parents may be offered support services or in some extreme cases, parents may face criminal charges. 

Once children are placed in the foster system, support for family is ongoing and planned visits are usually encouraged.

Every foster care case must include a permanency plan. The DHHS defines permanency planning as “decisive, time-limited, goal-oriented activities to maintain children within their families of origin or place them with other permanent families.”

According to the Children’s Bureau, “Family reunification, except in unusual and extreme circumstances, is the permanency plan for most children.” Adoption or transfer of custody to a relative are alternatives, when reunification is impossible, but as Weatherford said, “Reunification is always the goal.”

Federal law requires that a permanency hearing be held within 12 months of a child entering foster care. The permanency hearing determines whether reunification, termination of parental rights leading to adoption, legal guardianship, or another planned permanent living arrangement is best suited for the family’s situation. 

The Children’s Bureau goal for child welfare is “to promote the well-being, permanency, and safety of children and families by helping families care for their children successfully or, when that is not possible, helping children and find permanency with kin or adoptive families.” The majority of children who enter foster care eventually return to their own families, fulfilling the U.S. DHHS’s goal: “The ideal result of any foster care situation is always family reunification.”