There is a high correlation between jurisdictions with successful kin-first placements and counties with dedicated staffing for family finding and engagement and agency-wide integration with kin-first culture. Through the Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement and Support Program, the State has made $150 million available for expenditure through June 30, 2027 for family finding and engagement specialists, training and implementation of models and strategies. Counties may also receive training and technical assistance support from the Center for Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement and Support in the development of these plans and accessing these funds5.
Possible Staffing Models Include
- Dedicated family engagement staff members who are involved from first removal.
- Those who team with the emergency response staff and focus on building relationships with the family.
- Helping to support and identify roles individuals can play to support the child and family.
Some jurisdictions have hired staff (including retired case carrying Agency staff) to perform this function. Others have worked with their children’s behavioral health or Medicaid agency to provide certified family peers or wellness coaches, whose work can then be at least partially billed to Medicaid or have funded dedicated staffing through the Excellence in Family Finding, Engagement and Support Program.
These family engagement and support staff may remain with the family through the life of the case, providing important consistency of care and support as other case-carrying staff may change when the case progresses to different stages.
Other jurisdictions deploy these engagement specialists with a focus on pre-detention and initial removal with positive results that include more diversions from foster care into kinship care as well as higher initial formal placements with Kin if the child ends up being removed. Dedicated family engagement staff also frequently have access to flexible dollars, which allows them to remove immediate barriers to placement or approval (i.e., the ability to buy furniture, bed or clothing for the child or to pay for necessary repairs or modifications to the home required by a corrective action plan (CAP).
Dedicated staffing or units for family finding, which may include efforts focused on technology and the building of genograms as well as the family engagement described above.
Practice Tip
Most jurisdictions with high kin-first placements report that staff who are dedicated full time to kinship care work is key. Their role may differ as is described in this section, but having dedicated kinship staff not only helps support families and children with kin, but they can also be kinship champions, bringing expertise and culture shift to the Agency.
Dedicated units that work specifically with family finding and engagement for “deep end youth,” or children who have been in the foster care system for some period of time and have not been able to live with kin. These units may have special training through such organizations as Wendy’s Wonderful Kids or Seneca Center. Some jurisdictions have embraced this approach across entire divisions, for example re-naming and re-orienting their placement unit as the Relative Engagement and Placement Stabilization Unit.
Some jurisdictions supplement work above by Agency staff with contracts with community organizations. For example, some jurisdictions out-source nearly all of their pre-detention family finding, engagement and stabilization to local non-profits. The benefit of such an approach is reducing system involvement and helping strengthen homegrown community response to support families who are experiencing stress. One jurisdiction described it as being responsive to the community’s input and addressing low trust in the child welfare system. which had been hampering the ability of staff to work collaboratively and openly with families.
Other jurisdictions report outsourcing much of their family finding or engagement post-detention and removal. One drawback to such an approach can be the failure to integrate kin-first culture throughout the agency and to fragment working with relatives and the “other” more traditional pieces of foster care, which runs the risk of elevating congregate care and placement with
non-kin within the agency and siloing collaboration with relatives to external, contracted entities.
Next Section: Cross-System Collaborations