As part of Street Roots’ ongoing solutions-based reporting on the foster care system, Street Roots took a deep dive into the national and local data on placement stability and disruptions for young people in foster care. With funding and collaboration from the Solutions Journalism Network, Street Roots searched for positive deviants, or unique programs, showing evidence of success in reducing the number of moves for kids in foster care.
Read the rest of the series here.
Jaquelyn Reyes Alonzo didn’t speak English when she arrived in the United States as a teenager. With most of her family remaining in Guatemala, and few connections to her relatives in the United States, Reyes Alonzo faced a bumpy road ahead. “I came on my own, with little support,” said the now 22-year-old Portland college student.
As an immigrant, Reyes Alonzo was shuffled through a series of temporary placements before landing in Oregon’s foster care system at 17.
“It’s a big change,” she said. “You’re scared for your safety because of the fact you’re an immigrant. We don’t know how the system works.”
The learning curve was huge. Not only did she have to figure out life in the United States, but she also had to adapt to a world of seemingly endless transitions.
“I was in a home for six months, and then I only had two days’ notice before I was moved into another home,” Reyes Alonzo said.
Reyes Alonzo said she didn’t know her next caregiver or the area where she was moving; she just had to pack up and go.
“To go through the system and feel that instability — that insecurity,” Reyes Alonzo said. “You begin to close up. You don’t want to be hurt anymore.”
Placement instability is plaguing child welfare systems from coast to coast. Child welfare leaders are achieving moderate success in preventing children from entering the foster care system by providing preventative and support services to stabilize families and make homes safe for kids. However, workers are still struggling to solve the problem of frequent moves for kids already in the system.
State leaders in Georgia decided the number of moves for kids in their state was so out of hand; it was time to take a “pause.”
“There was just too much back and forth for kids,” said Shaun Johnson, caregiver coordination section director for the Georgia Department of Family and Children’s Services (GDFCS). “We had calls saying, ‘we need to get little Johnny moved.’ It was just calls after calls after calls.”
In February 2020, GDFCS leaders came up with a plan to take a 14-day pause before any placement change to give facilitators time to pull together all the people connected to that child on a single video conference call. They called it a PAUSE call, which stands for Placement Assistance Utilizing Stability Exploration.
“Stop what you’re doing, get all the players at the table,” Johnson said. “Let’s have a conversation before that placement disruption.”
Before PAUSE calls, it was typical for a caregiver and the child’s case manager to be the only people involved in requesting a child’s removal from a home. In contrast, PAUSE calls include state, regional and district directors, current and potential foster care providers, and sometimes, a child’s biological family members.
“We’re just talking through, trying to figure out what’s in the best interest of the child,” Johnson said.
Those on the call discuss the permanency plan and what supports are in place to prevent a disruption. Foster parents and other caregivers are invited to share their input.
“It’s more brainpower,” Johnson said.
“People are thinking outside the box. That’s why it’s so successful.”
The PAUSE program began as a pilot project but is now mandated in Georgia. On any given day, state and local leaders hold an average of five calls.
“This is work,” said Glenene Lanier, Georgia’s Permanency Connection Section Supervisor. “Sometimes, these calls can last two hours as we process what’s in the child’s best interest.”
During a PAUSE call, a facilitator helps share information about a child’s case. Participants are encouraged to share what worked well for other children in similar situations or suggest a potential foster family that might be a good match with the youth if removal is required.
“We will contact that foster parent and say, ‘We’re on a PAUSE call for this child, and do you think this a child who could benefit from being placed in your home?’" Johnson said.
PAUSE calls offer foster families a rare opportunity to hear from the child’s former foster care provider. Also, the calls provide a chance for administrators to educate social workers about resources available to help them do their jobs.
“We’re not saying the PAUSE process is the be all end all for placement stability for children,” Lanier said. “But we wanted to do something intentional around these placement stability outcomes.”
Both Lanier and Johnson acknowledged there are still gaps to fill, including better tracking and monitoring of the program’s success. At this point, the limited data they have is entered manually into the state data tracking system, so administrators said they’re relying on qualitative results.
In fall 2020, they sent a survey to providers, staff and others involved in the program to collect feedback on PAUSE calls. Johnson said they’ve also continued to update the program as feedback comes into the state office.
Johnson said caregivers appreciate the PAUSE program for providing an opportunity to be heard and discuss unaddressed issues. Many respondents like the extra supports offered to stabilize placements, including therapeutic interventions and behavioral aids.
Others said PAUSE calls have strengthened relationships between state and local agencies and care providers. Providers are more willing to extend move dates due to their developing partnerships with agencies that share the goal of quality placements.
"Imagine when you come home from work, someone pulls in your driveway in a white station wagon, speaks a language you don’t understand, escorts you out, straps you into the backseat, drives you to a house you’ve never been to before, where there are more people who speak a language you don’t understand, and drops you off."
Providers and state workers said they like the idea of working together to identify the type of placement that would be most successful for a particular youth.
As for constructive criticism, some providers said PAUSE calls made them feel cornered into deciding to keep a child in their care. Johnson explained there was an ongoing issue with some group care providers discharging kids for reasons social workers didn’t believe rose to the level of a necessary discharge.
Johnson said, in response to caregivers’ concerns about feeling cornered, administrators reached out to explain, “just because we’re getting on a call to discuss a placement, no one is forcing anyone to keep a placement.”
Johnson said a forced placement is not the way to create placement stability.
The state also received criticism about the PAUSE calls wasting people’s time. Participants complained multiple people from the same office ended up on the same call. Johnson said they are looking into the duplicity and are in the process of hiring a designated PAUSE program facilitator to coordinate each meeting better.
Though Georgia has struggled in the past to achieve placement stability for its youth in foster care, the state appears to be on an upward trajectory.
Although the state is still waiting to compile data from the now 20-month-old PAUSE program, national placement stability data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System
(AFCARS) shows Georgia ranks just second to Iowa for largest improvements in placement stability between 2015-2019. Placement stability is considered two or fewer placements for a child placed in care.
Georgia saw improvements in all three “time in care” categories for kids, with a combined 25.3% improvement in the overall number of youths with two or fewer placements.
Oregon’s placement stability rate declined between 2015-2019 for children in foster care fewer than two years, but placement stability improved for youths in care for two or more years. Combining all three “time in care” categories, Oregon saw a 2% decline in the percentage of kids with two or fewer placements.
Reyes Alonzo said her experience in Oregon’s foster care system made it difficult to make friends because she simply assumed she’d be moving again.
“I didn’t want to open up anymore,” she said, “but when you close down, it’s hard to grow as a person.”
Reyes Alonzo believes any time adults are considering a placement change for a child, youth need to have a voice in the decision-making.
“Youths know what they need and what they want,” she said.
Reyes Alonzo said young people need placements in homes with lots of supervision and a high level of cultural awareness. She said they also need more accessible mental health services to deal with the effects of the pandemic and other changes in their lives.
Charles Zeanah, a psychiatrist and professor from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans and expert in child and adolescent psychiatry, speaks to groups about the importance of child-centered transitions.
He asks people to consider placement moves through the eyes of a child.
“Imagine when you come home from work, someone pulls in your driveway in a white station wagon, speaks a language you don’t understand, escorts you out, straps you into the backseat, drives you to a house you’ve never been to before, where there are more people who speak a language you don’t understand, and drops you off,” Zeanah said.
Older kids can understand what is happening better than younger children in foster care. However, Zeanah said these transitions are still a big deal for older children, and handling transitions is extremely important for their well-being.
He said young people in care, foster parents, caseworkers and biological family members need to get to know each other, “rather than just having lots of fantasies about what the other person is like, without any real contact.”
Zeanah said picking up kids from school and taking them to a new placement without letting them say goodbye to their foster families or collect their belongings is just bad for kids.
“It’s done in a way to say, let’s not talk about this major thing that’s happening to you. We’re just going to avoid the topic altogether,” Zeanah said.
Zeanah said transitions are also hard on social workers who may not have a support system to talk about what it’s like to move kids from one place to another. He said agencies need to build infrastructure to support the people doing the work, so they’re in a better position to support children’s best interests.
“Doing transitions gradually and letting children get to know the people who will be caring for them before they take them on full-time is very helpful,” Zeanah said.
Reyes Alonzo said her three-year foster care journey ended with a stable placement with an amazing foster family.
“Looking back, I realize that’s when I thrived,” she said.
Her foster family and a dedicated mentor formed a solid support system for her, and Reyes Alonzo began to believe anything was possible.
“They gave me more liberty in what I wanted to do,” she said. “If they couldn’t help me, they’d find people who could.”
She set her sights on attending college and was able to get a scholarship to Warner Pacific College in Portland, where she is currently majoring in Psychology. Her future goal is law school.
Reyes Alonzo hopes to share the lessons she’s learned in foster care to make sure people understand placement stability requires a lot more than just a safe place for a young person to sleep.
“You need to be more intentional about where you are placing a youth,” she said. “All it takes is one stable adult to affect a child’s life and make a difference.”