This article originally appeared in the March-April 2000 issue of the Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Fostering community

With the Family to Family program, foster children stay close to home and their parents gain mentors

By Claudia Miller

Marsha Loza, a foster parent in Pacoima, remembers one of the first foster children she cared for—a little girl from Long Beach, about 40 miles away from her home. The birth mother, who was in a rehab center, wanted desperately to visit her child but was allowed to leave the center for only four hours and Pacoima is a two-hour bus ride away. "It was really sad because she really wanted to stay in contact with her child but wasn't able to," Loza said.

That scenario doesn't happen any more in Pacoima, or in many parts of Los Angeles County, thanks to Family to Family, an innovative foster care program supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Family to Family provides money for counties nationwide to recruit foster parents in neighborhoods that historically have needed them the most. Foster parents are paid not only to care for the children, but also to develop a mentoring relationship with the birth parents. Ideally, the foster parent, birth parent, social worker, and community liaison work together to reunify the family.

Right now the Family to Family approach is used with about 25 percent of the 50,000 children in Los Angeles County foster homes, but Judy Flicker, L.A. program director for Family to Family, says the goal is to have the entire county in the program soon. "This is definitely the right way to do our work," she says.

Before Family to Family, Loza was mostly left alone to care for a foster child placed in her home, except for weekly visits from a social worker. Now Family to Family supports a "caregiver liaison" she can call on to help her work out problems and locate community resources.

Family to Family was first introduced in Alabama, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland in 1992. Today, it is also operating or under consideration in seven other states. The Casey Foundation gives states an initial grant of $2.5 million to recruit foster parents, give additional training to foster parents, and hire local staffers to work in communities.

In the neighborhood

"Family to Family is so much better for so many reasons," says Loza. "It's hard for children to have to leave their families, their schools and everyone they know." With foster care in their own neighborhoods, children can continue with the same teachers, see their friends and Little League coaches, attend their local churches, and–most important if they are to be reunited—have regular visits with their biological parents.

For foster parents like Loza, there have been benefits to developing a relationship with the birth parent. Loza says some birth parents would visit her home to bring birthday gifts or cook a special, familiar meal for the child. She could ask the birth parents about the children's typical routine, clothing, and food. And in her home, she could model good parenting. "They could see how we handled discipline, how different situations could be resolved," she says.

Xavier Rosales, a Pacoima social worker who's now a county child services administrator, says initially some foster parents resisted being mentors because they felt uncomfortable with the birth parents. "But as the program got started, they realized it didn't have to be an adversarial relationship. Instead of the foster parent being a substitute for the birth parent, it became a partnership with everyone working to reunite the family."

In fact, foster parents and biological parents often formed strong friendships that lasted even after the child was reunited with his parents. It's not unusual to see a child graduating from school with birth parents and foster parents seated together in the audience, says Rosales.

"Being local helps the parents to trust you," agrees Loza. "Some parents are still threatened because they think the foster parent is going to keep the child, but most feel good about your being in the neighborhood."

Reorientation

The change in Los Angeles County was spurred by a 1988 lawsuit by the Youth Law Center charging the county with neglecting children in foster care. As part of the settlement, the county embarked on the Community Based Placement Project, which evolved into Family to Family. Social workers were charged with finding children foster homes within five miles of their home.

That meant a major change in the way foster care was organized. Instead of caseloads all over the county, each social worker now works in a small geographic region and tries to get acquainted with community organizations and civic leaders. Foster-parent recruiters hand out flyers outside local schools, grocery stores, and churches.

One obstacle to recruitment, says Flicker, is the lack of housing assistance. Many would-be foster parents in low-income communities can't afford housing that meets foster-care standards. Still, Pacoima now has more than 60 foster homes; in 1994, when the program began, there were nine.

"A better experience"

A 1998 national evaluation of Family to Family shows that foster children in this program moved around less and were more likely to live with relatives. In some communities they were also more likely to be reunited with their parents. So far L.A.'s program has no numbers to prove it, but Peter Digre, former director of the L.A. Department of Children and Family Services and now a Casey Foundation consultant, says, "From a family's perspective, it is absolutely impossible for this not to be a better experience. While it's never good when a family has a child placed into foster care, if they can continue to maintain a relationship with their child, attend family therapy sessions together, and develop a partnership with a foster parent who is sympathetic and acts as a mentor, then it's going to be better for everyone."

And while motivated parents eager to be reunited with their children benefit from Family to Family's mentoring and support system, those who don't participate in visits with the child and community service programs will find their parental rights terminated more quickly. From the child's perspective, Family to Family makes it easier to get the child out of the system and into a permanent home, Digre adds.

And Family to Family should result in fewer children being placed in foster care, says Carole Shauffer, Youth Law Center executive director, because as social workers get to know neighborhood families, they can intervene before it is necessary to remove a child from his home.

Meanwhile social workers have embraced Family to Family despite the additional work of recruiting and training, says Digre, "This field has suffered from nearly terminal short-sightedness for many years because it's been so focused on the day-to-day 'slot scramble,'" he said. In the 1980s, budget cuts to the department, coupled with the crack cocaine epidemic, overwhelmed social workers with the sheer numbers of children needing foster homes.

"But deep in their hearts, social workers are community-oriented and are tired of being paper-pushers," says Digre. "Rather than just making a required visit, they get to become part of a team of teachers, psychologists, police officers, and community members. They become a really integral and vital part of the neighborhood, not just government bureaucrats."

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