Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 1) | Page 58

Juveniles

Research has also revealed that resilience is the product of multiple
connections. Connections to people who genuinely care about the children
turn out to be critical. And yet, too often when children are removed from
families, there is little real effort to maintain or enhance children’s current
relationships while in care. (It is even more uncommon to see efforts to
create new relationships through natural connections to relatives not tied to
placement options.)
If we know these connections are necessary, why do we not routinely ensure that
they are in place? Perhaps for the same reason we ignore visitation evidence.
The average parent gets one hour of visits per week with the children. We
know from research that adding another hour of visits results in a tripling of
successful reunification efforts, doing nothing additional in the case. Adding
another hour triples success again. Going from one hour of visits to three
hours of visits can result in a nine-fold increase in successful reunification.
And yet, the possibility of additional visits is given little attention. Similarly,
caseworkers sometimes struggle to keep families as the center of their work
while working on documenting compliance with standards.
Research is clear that children who manage with good community support
to stay out of the justice system have better outcomes than those who are in
care and those who age out of care without the caring connections of families
or stable relationships with adults.
As some would say, maybe it is time to remind ourselves to have a system
that intervenes in the lives of children and families in such a way as to bring
healing, not separation; to bring improvements, not disadvantages and
burdens; to bring an ally to families in trouble, not an adversary. Segments
of the child-serving community have been doing this work and we need to
support that work.
3rd April 2014

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