Vol. 7, No. 1• November 2002

Family to Family: Five Counties Lead the Way as North Carolina Embraces Foster Care Reform

by John McMahon

Cumberland, Durham, Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Wake Counties are in the process of transforming foster care in North Carolina. Earlier this year, these counties committed themselves to a national initiative called Family to Family. Sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and endorsed by the N.C. Division of Social Services, Family to Family seeks to reconceptualize, redesign, and reconstruct the foster care system in North Carolina and the nation. Casey and the Division hope that, because of their size, these five counties—which are responsible for the care of more than a third of North Carolina’s nearly 10,000 foster children—will spark changes in child welfare practice and policy across the state.

The Vision

What kind of changes are we talking about? Family to Family envisions a child welfare system that does a better job:

  • Providing services to families when maltreatment occurs, so children can remain safely in their own homes;

  • Returning foster children in group homes and institutions to family-style placements in their neighborhoods;

  • Involving foster families as team members in family reunification efforts;

  • Strengthening communities from which the foster care population comes; and

  • Providing permanent families for children in a timely manner.

Family to Family envisions a child welfare system that collaborates with others to cultivate communities that support and nurture all families. Family to Family envisions a time when children who must be removed from their homes can stay with foster families in their own neighborhoods, sparing them the trauma of being separated from their friends, relatives, pets, schools, and all they know.

Pursuing the Vision

The Casey foundation has created strategies (see sidebar) and tools to help North Carolina and other participating sites make the Family to Family vision a reality. As the N.C. Division of Social Services’ David Atkinson explains, these tools and strategies are really about changing the way we do business in child welfare. “We know where we want to go as a system. We see Family to Family as the vehicle, the catalyst that will take us there.”

Because they cannot hope to achieve the initiative’s vision without them, Family to Family counties are making special efforts to recruit, train, and support foster families. For example, soon after it joined Family to Family, Cumberland County Department of Social Services gave its local foster parent association an office and computer at DSS, as well as space for the association’s clothes closet. Cathy Ferran, a program manager at Cumberland DSS, says her agency also surveyed foster parents to find out how it can better serve them. Now that they have this input Cumberland and the other pilot counties are striving to provide foster parents all the information they can about children prior to placement, to return phone calls in a timely way, and to respond to foster parents’ other concerns.

In addition to reaching out to foster parents in this way, Alma Shelton, Family to Family project manager at Wake County Human Services, says her agency is making a concerted effort to promote contact between foster parents and birth parents and to involve them in family team decision-making. Also called “child and family teams,” family team decision-making is a strategy that involves birth families, their supporters (such as a minister or family friends), foster parents, and other community members in decisions regarding the family.

A Foster Parent’s Experience

Initially, some foster parents are skeptical about increased involvement with birth families. When she heard about Family to Family, Anita Robinson-Christmas, a foster parent in Wake County, says “I didn’t think it would work. I thought, ‘If I’m going to be right in the same neighborhood with the mother and she knows where I live, what’s to keep her from coming and snatching her kids?’ I worried she might threaten me or make harassing phone calls. Those were my biggest fears.”

Still, Robinson-Christmas was willing to give it a try. One month after she began caring for two girls, aged 3 and 6, their mother began attending Robinson-Christmas’ church, which was in the neighborhood where they both lived. Sharing this community, this “church family,” made a huge difference to everyone, she says. Now, instead of seeing their mother every other week for an hour at DSS, the girls could see her once or twice a week at the church, where they would worship and eat together.

Reassured, Robinson-Christmas encouraged phone contact between the mother and the girls. “Sometimes the girls would just call their mom to say good-night. I could tell the difference in the children’s attitude, and in the mother’s attitude, too—she was more open, more positive.”

After a few months, Robinson-Christmas was invited to participate in a meeting about the family. The facilitator was fair and neutral, she says, and helped everyone come to consensus about what would be best for the girls. Once they agreed, the facilitator wrote down what the team had decided and they all signed the document. In the end, the girls went to live with their mother’s cousin.

Robinson-Christmas’ doubts about Family to Family are gone. “This is different,” she says. “This is very good for the kids.” And her commitment to fostering is stronger than ever. One can hear the excitement in her voice as she reveals, “I’m getting a little boy tomorrow. He’s three years old.”

Those involved in this project agree Family to Family will positively influence North Carolina long after the initiative’s Casey funding expires in 2004. As Shelton puts it, “This is not an initiative, its about changing the way we operate. The life expectancy of Family to Family is infinite.”

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Copyright � 2002 Jordan Institute for Families