Keeping Children Out of Group Placements: Strategies and Alternatives

Every child deserves to grow up in a fam­i­ly instead of an insti­tu­tion. To help child wel­fare sys­tems iden­ti­fy prac­tices that may reduce their reliance on group place­ments, Luther­an Ser­vices in Amer­i­ca exam­ined ini­tia­tives used by its providers. Trans­form­ing Con­gre­gate Care: A White Paper on Promis­ing Pol­i­cy and Prac­tice Inno­va­tion, a new report, dis­tills their find­ings. It high­lights promis­ing pro­grams and prac­tices as guide­posts for future child wel­fare reforms. 

“There is no sub­sti­tute for a fam­i­ly when chil­dren and young peo­ple are work­ing through their hurt and pain,” says San­dra Gas­ca-Gon­za­lez, vice pres­i­dent of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Cen­ter for Sys­tems Inno­va­tion. ​“We must sup­port fam­i­lies to remain togeth­er and serve chil­dren based on their needs with­in their com­mu­ni­ty rather than in insti­tu­tions. With inven­tive prob­lem-solv­ing solu­tions such as the Con­gre­gate Care Elim­i­na­tion Dis­cov­ery Ini­tia­tive, we can cre­ate the bet­ter, more equi­table future that all chil­dren, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties deserve.” 

Trans­form­ing Con­gre­gate Care was pro­duced by Anto­nio Oftelie, a Luther­an Ser­vices in Amer­i­ca board mem­ber and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Lead­er­ship for a Net­worked World at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. The Con­gre­gate Care Elim­i­na­tion Dis­cov­ery Ini­tia­tive, fund­ed by the Casey Foun­da­tion, con­duct­ed the research.

More than 55,000 chil­dren live in group place­ments, about 14% of all chil­dren in fos­ter care in this coun­try. This pop­u­la­tion is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly made up of chil­dren of col­or, espe­cial­ly Black chil­dren. Kids of col­or also tend to start ear­li­er and stay longer in these pro­grams than oth­er chil­dren, because child wel­fare sys­tems more fre­quent­ly sep­a­rate Black fam­i­lies rather than seek alter­na­tives that keep chil­dren with par­ents or kin. 

Luther­an Social Ser­vices of South Dako­ta (LSSSD) offers an ​“exem­plary case study” of a solu­tion that slowed a stream of chil­dren enter­ing care. There, data revealed that judges often sent chil­dren to group place­ments when their fam­i­lies failed to show up in court. This affect­ed many chil­dren of col­or. LSSSD respond­ed by des­ig­nat­ing a ​“Racial and Eth­nic Fair­ness Case Man­ag­er,” who helps fam­i­lies obtain a trans­la­tor, trans­porta­tion or edu­ca­tion to nav­i­gate the juve­nile jus­tice system. 

Since cre­at­ing the posi­tion, ​“LSSSD has seen a reduc­tion in the num­ber of war­rants and observed a shift in the mind­set among pro­fes­sion­als in the court sys­tem,” the paper says. ​“Focus­ing on holis­tic out­comes can strength­en youth and fam­i­lies,” help address racial inequities and more appro­pri­ate­ly sup­port each family’s needs, the report says. Prac­tices doc­u­ment­ed by the six providers offer hope for future reforms.

“As providers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers move for­ward, they can lever­age the work of this cohort and imple­ment proven strate­gies to elim­i­nate the unnec­es­sary reliance on con­gre­gate care and deliv­er bet­ter out­comes for chil­dren,” Oftelie wrote.