In this lesson, you will learn:
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LESSON ONE: Understanding the Birth Parents
In working toward the safety and permanency of children, the Office of Children's Services realizes the importance of the connections between children and their birth families, their culture and their communities. Increasingly, resource families are asked to actively support these connections. This means supporting a child's continuing relationship with the birth parent. It may also mean more contact between the birth parent and the resource parent.
Working with Families: The Role of the Office of Children's Services
The Office of Children’s Services is mandated to investigate and work with families where there is suspected abuse or neglect of children. Social workers often work with families who:
- Struggle with drug or alcohol addictions.
- Face problems such as domestic violence and mental health issues.
- Struggle with lack of resources such as transportation, money, housing, support, supervision, and safe neighborhoods.
- Lack good role models or a support system for parenting and child care because of generational abuse or poor parenting.
- Start substance abuse treatment, then relapse, so experience a stop-and-go approach to the case plan.
Social workers need to balance the goal of reunification with the safety and permanency needed for the child. The roadmap for the parent to reach these goals is called the caseplan.
The Caseplan
When a child is removed from his home for reasons of maltreatment, the Office of Children's Services' initial goal is to return a child to his birth family if the family can make the changes needed to keep a child safe. This is called reunification, and this charge to attempt to reunify a family comes from both Alaska state law and federal laws.
In working with the family, a social worker and the birth family together will develop a caseplan. The caseplan needs to be developed within 60 days of the child’s removal from his parent’s care.
The caseplan outlines the goals of the case, changes parents must make to improve their home, and the services that the family is referred to. Reunification is usually the initial goal. The caseplan should be updated every six months or when there is a significant change in the child’s needs or the parents’ situation.
The caseplan also specifies the care of and services to the child. This plan outlines how often children have visitation, where the children will be placed, and what special services the child needs. This information is shared with you, the resource parent, so you can support the connections and contact needed between parent and child.
Visitation and Contact Between Parents and Children
Visitations are an essential part of the reunification process. If parents don't keep in contact with children, then attachment can be damaged. Parents may not be motivated to make changes. Children may lose valuable opportunities to build a relationship with their parents or relatives. Resource parents are critical partners in making sure children keep connected to their families.
Visitation early in the placement and often enough to keep a relationship between parent and child are considered one of the primary factors in the success of reunification. Alaska State Statutes requires that there be visitation between a child and his parents or guardian, unless there is court order indicating otherwise.
What is the Role of the Resource Family?
Resource families are important in this process of keeping the relationship between the child and his family. A social worker relies on the resource family to keep a child safe, to nurture and provide daily parenting and care to a child, and to assist with obtaining the needed counseling or services a child may need. Social workers also depend on resource families to support the caseplan, and help children get to visits or keep up contact with their extended families.
Resource families provide an important role to birth families as well. Resource families can:
- Help the child understand his situation
- Help a child keep a relationship with his birth parents.
- Help a child keep ties with siblings, granparents, extended family, and culture
- Provide a role model of good parenting
- Offer a mentorship to parents
- Facilitate a smooth transition for the child