State Child Welfare Policy Guide: Part of the Policy Matters Series

6.1 Family foster care within the child's own geographic and cultural community

Family foster care placements in geographically and culturally familiar settings may improve placement stability and other positive outcomes.  An Illinois study found that children placed outside their own neighborhoods were 55 percent more likely to experience subsequent instability than those placed near their homes of origin.[i]  Illinois children in state custody, the vast majority of whom are African American, experienced 75 percent more moves within a year if placed in white families than if placed with African American families.[ii] 

Recommended policies are based on community and agency experiences as well as the opinions of national and local experts, who believe that placement within the child’s home community can help reduce the trauma of separation and increase the possibility, timeliness, and quality of family reunification.[iii]  The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Family to Family Initiative promotes local collaboratives that serve children in neighborhood foster homes so the relationships between the children, their primary families, and their natural support networks can be maintained.  The Family to Family Initiative identifies neighborhoods with high child protection referral rates and then recruits, develops and supports kin and foster families who can care for children within their own neighborhoods.  Denver County, Colorado, for example, is investing in seven community collaboratives that recruit local foster families, support kinship placements, advocate for needed services in the communities in which families live, and more.[iv]

In 2002, 26 child welfare agencies from across the country, representing more than 94,000 children in out-of-home placement, participated in a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) sponsored by Casey Family Programs on strategies for recruiting and retaining foster and adoptive resource families.  The BSC is a method that originated in the health care field for rapidly testing small-scale changes, often making multiple cycles of modifications, and, when deemed successful, quickly spreading the changes throughout the system.  Participating agencies identified key themes of effective strategies: culturally sensitive recruitment of foster families, creating partnerships with the faith community in recruitment, and learning about, educating, and engaging targeted communities in recruitment efforts.

Policy Options:  States can promote placement in a child's community by adopting either or both of the following policies:

·         Foster family recruitment is targeted to neighborhoods with high placement rates and to communities of color (whose children are disproportionally represented in the foster care population).

·         Placements that maintain a child’s ties to his/her geographic and cultural community are required.