Late last month, the clearinghouse that greenlights foster care prevention services approved one new program that states can finance by drawing down federal funds aimed at lessening the use of foster care, rejected nine others, and announced 16 new programs up for consideration.
The clearinghouse was established in relation to the Family First Prevention Services Act, passed in February of 2018. The law enables states to use the Title IV-E entitlement — previously reserved for foster care and adoption support — to fund services aimed at working with parents to help avoid the need for a family separation.
Those services must be evidence-based and apply to three areas: parenting, substance abuse treatment and mental health interventions. The clearinghouse also reviews kinship navigator programs, which serve as one-stop contact points for a variety of services and support for relatives caring for loved ones.
Youth Services Insider sees an interesting subtext in the one program that was approved.
30 Days to Family, a well-known family finding protocol for placing children with kin within a month of entering foster care, received the top rating of Well-Supported, making it significantly easier for states to add the model to their state plans. Here is a description of the program from the clearinghouse:
Upon referral, Specialists conduct an intensive family search and engagement process designed to identify family members who could serve as a caregiver for the child or support the child and the caregiver with whom they are placed.
This search begins with the Specialist trying to contact all adult family members by the end of the first week and mapping out four generations of the child’s family (up to the child’s great grandparents). Specialists also attend court hearings and child welfare meetings to make initial connections with family members, support the family, and learn about the child’s needs.
The evidence on 30 Days to Family, which was developed by the Missouri-based Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition, was strong, with 17 favorable effects and no unfavorable effects found across two well-designed studies. That is not why Youth Services Insider finds its inclusion curious.
The clearinghouse exists to review and clear “programs and services intended to provide enhanced support to children and families and prevent foster care placements.” But 30 Days to Family is a model that kicks in, from its creators’ own self-description, “at the time [children] enter the foster care system.”
How could a program that implicitly follows an out-of-home placement be approved on a clearinghouse of services meant to prevent that very thing?
In Youth Services Insider’s humble opinion, this is a subtle indication of an increasing recognition in federal policy that kinship care, even when it occurs as a foster care placement, is fundamentally different from foster care. Put another way: the Family First Act is being calibrated to prevent placements with strangers, but not with relatives.
This aligns with the recent action the Biden administration took on licensing relative caregivers. States are now able to seek approval to create a separate, simpler path to licensure for relatives, and still be able to draw federal funds to help pay these caregivers through the Title IV-E child welfare entitlement. The first state and Native American tribe were approved through this new rule last month.
There has always been an acknowledgement within the Family First Act that in some cases, federally funded foster care prevention services would flow in cases where a child did live elsewhere for a spell; for example, where mom sought outpatient addiction treatment but Johnny lived with grandmother for a few months while that happened. And some child welfare advocates and legal experts have worried that might put tacit federal approval behind the concept of hidden foster care, where the physical custody of children changes without an accompanying change in legal custody.
We wonder whether the application of 30 Days to Family as a Family First Act service will be limited only to these engagements of relatives? To tap into federal funds for prevention, workers need to document that a child is at imminent risk of entering foster care; it’s hard to get your head around how to document that in a case where a child is in fact entering foster care.
Rejections and Re-Reviews
The clearinghouse found that the following programs and models did not currently meet the criteria for inclusion:
- A Second Chance, Inc. Kinship Navigator
- Addressing Family Violence and Abuse
- Fatherhood/Motherhood is Sacred
- Gathering of Native Americans/Gathering of Alaska Natives
- Linking Generations By Strengthening Relationships
- Make Parenting a Pleasure
- Relief Nursery
The clearinghouse re-reviewed the Colorado Kinnected Kinship Navigator Program and upgraded it to Supported. A re-review of SafeCare, an in-home behavioral parenting program, did not change its existing rate of Supported.
The clearinghouse has reviewed 169 individual models and programs, and approved 82 of them. Only 19 have received the highest rating of “Well-Supported.”
The clearinghouse also added 16 new programs to their list for review, which already had eight programs pending. Here’s that full list, broken out by type…
Parent Support and Training
1-2-3 Magic
24/7 Dad
Family Group Decision Making
Indiana Family Preservation Services
Kentucky Family Preservation Program
Nurturing Families
Nurturing Skills for Families
Period of PURPLE Crying
ACT Raising Safe Kids
Substance Abuse/Mental Health
Kentucky Strengthening Ties and Empowering Parents
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy
Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Prize Contingency Management
Adolescent Behavior/Development
AFFIRM Youth
Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency
Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems
Systematic Training for Effective Parenting
Creating Lasting Family Connections
Project Venture
Kinship Navigator
Ohio Kinship and Adoption Navigator Program
Keeping Foster and Kin Parents Supported and Trained
Kinship Interdisciplinary Navigation Technologically-Advanced Model (Re-review)
Thus far, 42 states and Washington, D.C., have received the required federal approval to use these services with federal funds. Another four states and Puerto Rico have submitted a plan for approval, and are awaiting word from the Administration for Children and Families.
Four Native American tribes have received direct approval for prevention plans — Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Salt River Pima, and Port Gamble S’Klallam.
Only four states have yet to even submit a prevention plan to the feds, which is required to access the funds: Alabama, Alaska, South Dakota and Texas.
