An Overview of the Lifelong Families Practice Model

Every­one is born into a family.

But sad­ly, many chil­dren who spend years in fos­ter care lose touch with their fam­i­lies. Too often, they spend their entire child­hood wait­ing to belong. In spite of the ded­i­cat­ed efforts of child wel­fare pro­fes­sion­als, every year near­ly 30,000 young peo­ple age out of fos­ter care with­out the safe­ty net of par­ents and extend­ed fam­i­ly to help them stay in school, find jobs and guide them along the path to becom­ing suc­cess­ful adults.

Casey Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, the Foun­da­tion’s for­mer direct ser­vices agency, found for­ev­er fam­i­lies for kids in fos­ter care with a new prac­tice approach called Life­long Fam­i­lies.

Life­long Fam­i­lies is root­ed in the firm con­vic­tion that every young per­son — what­ev­er their age or cir­cum­stance — deserves a for­ev­er fam­i­ly and can be pre­pared to live suc­cess­ful­ly in a fam­i­ly environment.

An ani­mat­ed video high­lights the val­ues, prin­ci­ple com­po­nents and ben­e­fits of the mod­el, as well as its ear­ly suc­cess­es at improv­ing the out­comes of chil­dren and youth in fos­ter care.

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