Priorities: Why Are Strong and Stable Families Important?

Although most children do best when they grow up in their own family[i], creating safe and stable opportunities for children of all races and ethnicities requires a range of options that promote a permanent, loving home.

Removing any child from his or her home creates disruption and loss for the child as well as additional stress for his or her family. When a child cannot be kept safe at home, the next best choice is extended family. Placement with relatives has been shown to provide children with greater stability compared to non-kinship families [ii]. Both formal and informal kinship placements have shown to decrease losses, promote well-being and maintain family ties. Removal from the home is less traumatic, and contact with birth parents is more regular.

If this type of kinship placement is not possible, family foster home placements in their own communities are the next preferred option so that the child’s ties to school, friends, and established support systems can be maintained. Finally, for those children who cannot be reunified with their biological parents, permanent options such as subsidized guardianship with family members, and finally, adoption must be explored.

Helping Children Thrive in Strong Stable Families

Policies that promote the following key elements help assure that children thrive within safe, permanent and lifelong families:

• Execute effective, timely and equitable decision-making for each and every child. Decisions that weigh critical risk and safety factors within the context of family strengths and community supports can ensure that all children and their parents get help in a timely way, regardless of race or age.
  
• Provide a continuum of services and supports. Because every family is different, parents at risk of having a child removed from their home need a range of services and supports to address their unique needs. Their children need stable connections to quality health care, education, mental health and other services, regardless of whether they are removed from home or not.
  
• Promote lifelong family connections. Even when children can’t live with their own parents, they need connections to family, siblings, grandparents, other relatives, and adults who will nurture healthy social,emotional and identity development.

[i] Doyle, Joseph J., MIT Sloan School of Management, Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Foster Care, (forthcoming) American Economic Review, March 2007 version. Retrieved from http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_fosterlt_march07_aer.pdf. 


[ii] Family Ties: Supporting Permanence for Children in Safe and Stable Foster Care With Relatives and Other Caregivers,2004, by Fostering Results, Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Available at www.fosteringresults.org/results/reports/pewresults_10-13-04_alreadyhome.pdf. Downloaded 6/02/09.