Permanency

Goal

No child leaves the system without a permanent family or a responsible caring adult in his or her life.

Strategies

Reunification, Recruitment, and Retention: Enhance the current efforts of Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the Probation Department, community partners, philanthropy, and others to provide services for parents seeking reunification, work with partners to increase the number of relative placements and other resource families, and expand supports for all caregivers (for example, assistance with visitation, access to child care).

Connections to Caring Adults: Make sure that every DCFS and Probation youth has the opportunity to be connected with a responsible caring adult.

Work To Date

• Created and working to expand countywide a family-finding pilot aimed at increasing placements of youth with non-offending parents or other relatives to decrease the number of youth who need to enter foster care (See progress report on the upfront Family Finding pilot project and Evaluation of the Upfront Family Finding Pilot (Child Trends 11-30-18))
• Working with partners to implement a pilot for using team meetings and expedited court hearings to stabilize hard-to-place youth in the DCFS Transitional Shelter Care unit
• Collaborating with the Chief Executive Office, DCFS, and multiple County departments to coalesce existing efforts as the basis for a cohesive multi-year countywide strategy that will support the self-sufficiency goals of transition-age foster youth (TAY), and create permanency for foster and probation youth at the earliest stage possible