Research & Evaluation
Intervention Approach with Kinship Families: Strategies for Child Protection Workers
Title IV-E Curriculum Module
Module Elements
- Summary of findings
- PowerPoint
- Selected references for additional readings
- Discussion Questions
- Potential guest speakers
- Discussion Questions
Module Summary
- Summary
- Relationship to policy/practice
- Project description, results summary
- Conclusion and recommendations
Keywords: Sexual Identity
Topics: Child protection workers, formal kinship foster care, intervention strategies, direct practice
Date completed: July, 2009
Summary
Thirty-five kinship cases were reviewed in Ramsey County’s Human Service Department to assess factors that workers encounter during service delivery. Four themes emerged as pervasive with kinship families: (a) placement disruptions, (b) children needing special services, (c) characteristics of biological parents and (d) supportive services to caregivers.
Relationship to Policy and Practice
Findings give credence to the many challenging situations that Child Protection Workers face in the provision of service delivery in foster kinship care. They question the notion that placement with relatives is static and provide detailed examples of factors that occur. Findings were incorporated into a direct practice framework with specific intervention strategies aim at maintaining the kinship placement, which is currently absent in the literature.
New models of service delivery in social work are constantly being developed to fit the context and culture of client families. The following suggested approach has been developed to assist Child Protection workers during direct practice with families in formal kinship care. It rests on two salient aspects of practice effectiveness; taking into account culture and context of those experiencing the phenomena. It is congruent with the value in qualitative research that findings are not generalizable but applicable to use as a guide practice.
Description of module content
1. Narrative
Brief background
As formal kinship care increases so does social work’s need to provide effective direct practice aimed at maintaining the caregiving relationship. Formal kinship care is defined as relatives caring for their kin under the auspices of the public child welfare system (Cuddle & Orme, 2002). It is usually call kinship foster care and is the fast growing type of out-of-home placement arrangement (Peters, 2005). In fact, kinship foster care is view as a “new” solution to older child welfare problems (Brown, Cohon, & Wheeler, 2002).
Child protection workers face complex situations when working with kinship care families. First, are the many barriers encountered in identifying relatives (Gibson, & Rinkle, in progress). Second is the lack of responses from identified kin who cannot for various reasons accept the role of caregiver. Third is father involvement in kinship care (O’Donnell, 1999, 2001). Fourth is the newness of the caregiving situations with is accompanied by changes in family relationships.
While the most of these problems have a presence in the literature on kinship care, the totality of their influences on the provision of services has not been developed into a practice approach
Project description
The qualitative findings being reported here were part of a larger mixed-method study conducted to further explore previous findings regarding the kinship search. The original research project was an evaluation of the Casey’s Foundation BSC conducted from October 2006 to May, 2008.
This current project was conducted from September, 2008 to May, 2009. It focuses on examining four components of direct service practice with kinship families: father involvement, culturally issues, and search process. Data were collected through reviews of kinship cases and personal interviews with workers. Findings are from case reviews only.
The procedures involved working with Child Protection staff (supervisor and manager ) to identify kinship cases. The cases were assessed for specific information using a 30 item survey form created specifically for this purpose.
Results
Demographic profile.
Of the 35 cases, caregivers range in age from 20 to 69. Most were child protection cases with aunts (12) and grandparents (9). The majority of the children in care were in sibling groups (21) and range in age from 15-19 (18).
Themes
Findings were coded into four themes describing problematic situations that workers documented in kinship case records. These themes are interrelated as they may have been present in more than one case or experienced by individual members of a sibling group. The numbers appearing after the subthemes indicate their frequencies for individual children. Each theme is explained below.
1. Kinship placement disruptions. Disruptions in kinship placements occurred when the child left the home of the relative caregiver. This movement was either abrupt or planned. It could have been initiated by the Child Protection Workers, child in care, or caregiver. Regardless of the situations, placement disruptions generally signaled a problem in the case or family relationship.
During case reviews, workers documented movements from the kinship placement to four out-of-home placement arrangements. These include (a) many sequential placements in stranger foster care (10), (b) kinship placements with different relatives sequentially (26), (c) residential treatment due to behavior problems (15) or incarceration for criminal acts (6), and returning to a former stranger foster care placement (2).
2. Children needing special services. The need for special services by children in kinship care is not surprising because of the possible trauma they experienced that resulted in the initial need for out-of-home placement. Child Protection Workers documented five types of problems children evidenced, which typically led to referrals for services: (a) mental health diagnoses (24), (b) learning disabilities (6), (c) physical health concerns (2), (d) running away or other behavioral issues (26), and (e) prenatal exposure alcohol or drugs (10).
3. Characteristics of biological parents. Child Protection Workers documented characteristics of both mothers and fathers of children in need of out-home-placement. Both parents were experiencing similar problematic situations such as (a) incarcerations, fathers (12) and mothers (6); (b) chemical abuse, mothers (19) and fathers (5); (c) homelessness or highly mobile, fathers (9) and mothers (7); and (d) mental illness diagnoses, mothers (8) and fathers (0).
There were exceptions that described distinct experiences by each parent. For fathers only, there was a lack of information about paternity (6). For mothers only, there was a history of Child Protection involvement (9) and being in either kinship foster care or stranger foster care at the same time as their children (3).
4. Supportive services to caregivers. Child Protection Workers recorded three types of services caregivers were referred to: counseling (12), training (4), and financial services beyond the normal subsidies (9).