Welfare Watch - July 22, 2009  - Focus on Family Centered Practice

Georgia is refocusing its lens on Family Centered Practice. For many years, our focus has been on a child-centered approach to child welfare. The child-centered approach often pulled children from their families and placed them in caring environments, which in many cases denied what we now recognize is at the heart of what children need and desire -- “their own families.”  The old system of child welfare regularly rescued children and removed them from their families, often marginalizing the family’s involvement in the care of the child.

A new system of child welfare that focuses on Family Centered Practice recognizes that the best place for a child to grow up is in a family. This new belief is informed by a growing body of research. The focus remains on keeping children in safe and stable families. The Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) Director and Assistant Commission of the New Department of Human Services, Mark Washington presented A Roadmap to Transformation Through Values-Driven Practice in which he identified guiding beliefs in this transformation to be that “all individuals, families and communities have strengths” and that “we can enhance a family’s ability to care for their children by building on those strengths.”

The Family Centered Practice Model is one of the priorities for the DFCS stakeholder partnership to include development of expectations around Family Team Meetings (FTMs). DFCS has initiated a practice guide for FTMs.  These individualized plans for children and their families build on identifying their strengths so that they can address their needs. The FTM process is family centered and builds on the following principles:

• All families have strengths and are experts on themselves.

• Most families can make well informed decisions about child safety when supported.

• Involving families in decision making improves outcomes.

• People are capable of change and most people are able to find the solutions within themselves when helped in a caring way.

• A solution that a family generates with a team is more likely to fit that family because it will respond to the family’s unique strengths and needs.

Six counties were originally identified to participate in training, assessment and implementation. Catoosa, Walton, Richmond, Brantley and Muscogee Counties remain pilots for developing and initiating Family Centered Practice. Family Centered Practice is scheduled to go live state-wide on December 1, 2009.  

The emphasis of Family Centered Practice is that families will determine what they need versus the system dictating what families need.  The movement is toward cooperative parenting that gives families and children ownership over the decisions that impact their lives. DFCS is striving to ensure that decisions are not made without the family’s input. We are reminded to look at what’s right with the family and build on that. When families are supported in their communities, families can make changes and the evidence is showing that it is effective in keeping children nurtured and safe.

For those children who may not be reunified with their families, we must do everything we can, as quickly as we can, to find their safe, stable, and permanent families.

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Welfare Watch, an email newsletter of the
Georgia Association of Homes
and Services for Children
as a public service.
http://www.gahsc.org
                            Normer Adams, Editor
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