Placement Stability: A Web-based Practice Toolkit was funded through a cooperative agreement between the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York and the Children’s Bureau to the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections.
This toolkit is intended as an online tool for programs, states and tribes where promising practices, programs and resources are made available. It can provide an opportunity to connect with colleagues and share program successes and challenges. For this toolkit, we reviewed current research and documentation on placement stability. Our goal is to provide the field with information on the three components that support placement stability practice. We tried to provide a broad array of resources from research, state policies, procedures and practices, curricula and an organizational self study guide.
I am grateful to our colleagues at the Children’s Bureau/ACF/DHHS for their insight into the need for such a toolkit. Taffy Champion, Federal Project Officer for the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections, has spearheaded this process and provided guidance and direction in making this toolkit a reality.
I want thank the staff and our consultants at the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections for their work on this toolkit. I want to recognize especially Joan Morse our Assistant Director at the NRCPFC who took the lead in putting this together and our NRCPFC project consultant, Madelyn Freundlich, whose knowledge and guidance helped shape this toolkit. Their combined knowledge of the field was significant in developing the core components.
We would like to thank our colleagues from the other National Resource Center’s who provided information and resources that have enhanced this resource.
In this toolkit we focus on the benefits of placement stability. But the consequences of placement instability are profound on the lives of children and youth in the foster care system. Anyone who needs to be reminded of the trauma that instability brings needs to watch Michael Trout’s wonderful film – “Multiple Transitions,” which is available on line at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-306211141837494846
Some in the child welfare community minimize the consequences of “placement drift”on the lives of adolescent who although they are preparing to transition to adulthood – need stability and permanence as much as their younger counterparts. The stress and trauma of multiple placements and disruptions on teens is clearly evident in the wonderful film titled: “We Interrupt” made by youth from the Minnesota Adoption Resource Network Youth. It is available for viewing, in two parts on You Tube:
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StY__eircls
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvG0-JvmR-I
More than half a century ago, Maas and Engler examined the consequences of “drift” and the lack of permanence on the lives of children. Today, we know the trauma and detriment associated with those consequences. In publishing this Web Based Toolkit on Placement Stability, it is our hope that its use will assist those in the field of child welfare to facilitate stability and move children and youth toward permanency with the least amount of placements possible.
Gerald P. Mallon, DSW
Julia Lathrop Professor of Child Welfare
Executive Director, NRCPFC at the Hunter College School of Social Work
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