Active youth engagement in permanency planning and decision-making is absolutely essential. Planning must genuinely be guided by each youth’s wishes, hopes and dreams and must respectfully honor their feelings about past and current relationships.  For that reason, a core component of youth permanency practice is the active engagement of young people in:

• The permanency planning process
• The identification of key individuals who can play significant roles in their lives, including as team members in planning and as a permanent parent or lifelong family connections
• Active recruitment for a permanent parent when the youth cannot safely return to birth or legal parents or extended family
• The process of preparation and readiness for permanency

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in its review of the 52 Program Improvement Plans, found that collaboration with youth is a key strategy in addressing permanency for youth in foster care.   Yet, Child and Family Services Reviews indicate that in 42 states (84%), the agency was found to have failed to make concerted efforts to involve children and youth in case planning. (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/cwmonitoring/results/fcfsr_report.pdf).

Finding permanency for youth in out-of-home care is paramount because it provides them with stable, life-long, family relationships. Child welfare agencies, in partnership with the larger community, have a moral and professional responsibility to find a permanent family for these youth. With their help each child and young person in foster care will be able to create lasting relationships. Nevertheless, many young people at first are resistant to the notion of finding permanency. These adolescents may have had multiple placements and bad experiences, which may have resulted in the harboring of anxiety, fear, anger, and resentment.  Listed below are a number of possible reasons why some youth may hold back from finding permanency:

• “I don’t want to give up past connections”
• “I don’t want to lose contact with my family”
• “I don’t want to lose contact with important people”
• “I will have to change my name”
• “No one will want me”
• “I am too destructive for a family”
• “Families are for little kids”
• “I don’t want to betray my birth family”
• “Mom said she would come back”
• “I want to make my own decisions”
• “I’ll just mess up again”
• “I don’t want to risk losing anyone else”

Exploring options for permanency is a process, not a one-time event. It is incumbent upon adults who have a relationship with the young person to help them to consider the option of lifetime connections. This way the adults would be able facilitate the reframe of the initial “NO!,” into a “YES,” or event an “I’ll think about it” response. Here are a number of tips that caseworkers can use in order to unpack the initial “no” response:

• Ask the youth how they are feeling about the permanency planning process. What memories, fears, and anxieties is it stirring up?
• Discuss sensitively with the youth where they might like to belong and address the strong feelings that might underlie a statement by a young person that he or she does not want to be adopted.
• Ask the youth questions like: Who believes in you, compliments, and loves you?; Who would you call at 2:00 AM if you were in trouble?; Who paid attention to you, looked out for you, cared about what happened to you?; and,  With whom have you shared holidays and/or special occasions?
• Youth and parents need help understanding that although a termination of parental rights ends the rights of the birth parents to petition the court, for visits or other contacts with their child, a TPR does not prevent the young person from visiting. Reinstatement of parental rights may also be a possibility.
• Interview the young person’s current and former foster parents, as well as group home staff, child care staff, and legal staff, to determine with whom the youth currently has connections: Who regularly calls the young person? Who has the young person had a special relationship with in the past? Who visits the young person and whom does the young person visit?
• Work with the youth to identify caring, committed adults with whom the youth would like to establish/re-establish a connection or with whom they have formed bonds.  Consider former foster parents, former neighbors, parents of close friends, members of their extended family, group home staff, cafeteria workers, maintenance staff, administrators, teachers, coaches, law guardians, attorneys, judges, and work colleagues.
• Engage the youth, his or her parents (if the youth is not currently freed for adoption) and foster parents or prospective adoptive parents, in a discussion about shared parenting and ongoing contacts with members of the youth’s birth family after the adoption.

When relating to permanency, caseworkers should never simply take no for an answer. It’s important that they remain youth-focused, listen to their needs, identify permanent connections, and take risks. Permanency will look slightly different for all young people, but the end result will be the same: a loving, supportive, and life-long relationship.

In order to actively engage young people in permanency planning, a relational casework process is critical. It is the caseworker’s role to help the youth understand his or her role in the youth’s life – to make sure the youth has safe and permanent parenting and family relationships – and the importance of the youth’s full participation in the permanency planning process. 

The caseworker:

• Ensures that the youth understands that permanency work focuses on safe parenting, not self-parenting – the youth having a legal permanent parent to provide day-to-day caregiving and a nurturing, supportive relationship.
• Acknowledges the separations and losses in a youth’s life and the youth’s need to grieve them while working to restore, heal and/or build safe and healthy relationships.
• Establishes youth’s safe connections or re-connections with siblings and family members, even when youth cannot continue to grow up within their birth family.
• Explains, so that the youth understands, reunification, adoption and legal guardianship as the only options for legal permanence.
• Communicates the urgency of permanency to the youth, including the intention that no youth grow up in the foster care system, the negative risks to aging out, and the focus of permanency planning being to help him or her exit to a permanent parent as soon as safely possible.

The goal is to actively engage the young person as much as is possible throughout the permanency planning process, which helps to strengthen the casework relationship and increase the ability of the caseworker to deepen permanency conversations that require courage, vulnerability and risk on the part of the youth.  

Youth are more likely to be engaged in the planning process when the caseworker:

• Customizes it based on each youth’s age, maturity, developmental level and/or challenges, and capacity to handle the process
• Works continuously with both the youth and the important and supportive adults in his/her life
• Encourages the youth to have an active a role in permanency planning, including preparing and supporting the youth in taking an increasing leadership role in team meetings
• Involves the youth in identifying key individuals who can play significant roles in their lives, including as planning team members, permanent parents and lifelong connections
• When youth cannot safely return to parents or extended family, also supports the youth in playing an active role in recruiting new families (previously known or unknown to them) who could become a permanent parent through adoption or legal guardianship
• Acknowledges and explores the youth’s ambivalence as it arises – about participating in planning, being parented, or re-establishing connections to family – and assists youth in moving through his or her ambivalence to reach a legal permanency outcome

State Examples

Iowa’s The Blue Sheet provides practical application of Iowa’s Blueprint for Permanency which includes “authentic youth engagement through family team meetings, regular face-to-face visits and youth-centered practice at the individual practice level.”

Minnesota developed a Supervisors’ Forum on Achieving Permanency Outcomes for Older Youth: Youth Engagement that focuses on youth-driven practice and full engagement of young people in their own planning.

The New Jersey Adolescent Services Strategic Plan 2011-2014 is guided by the principle of empowering youth to engage in planning regarding their own lives as well as service planning within their communities to the extent that it is developmentally appropriate.

Resources to assist in engaging youth include:

Getting Solid: A Youth’s Guide to Permanence
Developed by Foster Club, this guide helps young people understand and prepare for permanence by providing:

• A youth-friendly format
• Youth perspectives about permanence
• Interactive worksheets
• Ideas and questions to inspire discussion
• Information regarding permanence options
• Discussion about the advantages gained through permanent relationships with supportive adults

Whether a young person works through this book on their own, with a supportive adult or in a group setting, the lessons and stories inside will inspire youth to form the permanent connections crucial to future success. This guide is available through The University of Oklahoma National Resource Center for Youth Services for purchase at $12.95 each.  Order form: fosterclub.com

Permanency Pact
Developed by Foster Club, the “Permanency Pact” is designed to encourage life-long, kin-like connections between a young person and a supportive adult. This list of potential roles for caring adults can help youth consider why they might need a permanent parent and lifelong family connections.

Youth Guiding Questions
Used to initiate permanency conversations with youth participating in Lifelong Families at Casey Family Services, Youth Guiding Questions are designed to prompt consideration of who has been important to the youth in the past, who they want to be there in the future and why they might need a parent as well as supportive adults in their life.

The Video Project
This tool for engaging youth in planning and developing their own permanence uses video to incorporate the voices of youth into their own case records. The caseworker uses a portion of six regular monthly visits to initiate a process of having the youth tell and claim their own story, correct negative information and harmful labels in his or her case record and in turn, feel a greater sense of control over their own lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_jC0YCZ9DU

Preparation of youth for permanency involves assisting youth in making sense of past family relationships and circumstances, understanding their present situation regarding family and planning a future that provides opportunity to be safely parented and have a secure sense of belonging in family. Permanency preparation is a key component of relational casework and best practice in youth permanency by helping a youth to clarify past life events, integrate all important family relationships, and become ready for permanent membership in a family through reunification, adoption or legal guardianship.

Resources to assist in preparing youth include:

Lifebooks
Lifebooks are tools that can be useful in working with youth to record memories and life events that occurred prior to their foster care placement as well as when youth are in placement. Lifebooks can help youth retain connections to people who have been important in their lives and may help them integrate past experiences with their present circumstances in a healthy, constructive manner (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2012). Lifebooks are traditionally the most well-known and prevalent tool used to initiate child and youth engagement and preparation – originally developed to prepare foster youth for adoption, and more recently, used in a variety of creative formats to promote readiness for reunification, adoption and legal guardianship. 

Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2012). Lifebooks.  Retrieved September 25, 2012 from University of Iowa. (n.d.). 

State and Local Examples

In California, expectations for county child welfare staff are outlined in this guidebook based on work with fourteen counties including a Lifebook as a helpful tool to address a youth’s losses and ensure they are prepared for permanent family relationships.

Indiana’s policy states:  “Every child referred for child preparation services will begin a Lifebook or continue working on an existing Lifebook. The Lifebook is a means of documenting the child’s life to date and is created for and with the child with the assistance of the child’s case manager, therapist, foster parent, CASA, and/or other individuals in the child’s life. It is designed to capture memories and provide a chance to recall people and events in the child’s life to allow a sense of continuity. The Lifebook also serves as a focal point to explore painful issues with the child that need to be resolved”.

The Philadelphia Department of Human Services provides clear information on Lifebooks and their importance for youth in foster care in its Foster Parent Handbook.

The Virginia Department of Social Services Child and Family Services Manual states that “lifebooks help children and youth develop and sustain a culturally sensitive, positive identity through identifying, maintaining and building a history of memories and connections.  All children and youth should have a Lifebook that belongs to them and accompanies them through the course of their involvement in foster care.”

The 3-5-7 Model.  Developed by Darla Henry, this practice model is designed to prepare youth for permanency by assisting them in grieving losses, formulating self-identity, establishing trust and security through attachments, and building relationships and openness as they prepare to join families on a permanent basis. It is built on a relational casework model and provides a solid clinical framework for guiding the youth through the tasks of clarification, integration and actualization in reaching a positive and successful permanency outcome and has been trained and adapted in many jurisdictions nationally.  Retrieved August 3, 2013 from

State and Local Examples

In California - Delaware, Kern, Los Angeles and Orange Countiesthe 3-5-7 model was implemented as outlined in the following publication:

The Pennsylvania Office of Children and Families in the Courts utilizes the 3-5-7 Model in conjunction with Family Finding and Family Group Decision Making in its Permanency Practice Initiative. 

The Child Preparation program utilized in Pennsylvania is based on the 3-5-7 model and provided by Family Design Resources (SWAN) to increase timeliness of permanency and reduce the potential for disruption of the legal family relationship. Assisting youth in making the transition from foster care to the particular permanency option selected for them, Child Preparation seeks to honor the past, answer questions, give the youth a voice, create connections and look to the future.

The following online training module was produced by Spaulding, Inc. for the child preparation unit of service provided through the PA Statewide Adoption and Permanency Network (SWAN). It uses a Lifebook as the central tool in child and youth preparation and demonstrates the five steps in preparation, as integrated with the 3-5-7 Model. A skill-based curriculum, it assists users in self-assessment of their level of permanency preparation knowledge and skill.

New Hampshire DCYF has implemented the 3-5-7 model in division offices statewide.

In Wisconsin beginning in 2010, Anu Family Services fully implemented 3‐5‐7 model practices of preparing youth for permanency through addressing grief, loss and trauma for youth with treatment-level needs.

Additional resources designed to assist in permanency preparation for youth include:

These handbooks were developed to assist in preparing youth for permanency in Alameda, Fresno and Sacramento Counties in California:
Alameda Guide
Fresno Youth Permanency Handbook
Sacramento Guide Permanency Options Youth

The Adoption Network of Cleveland, Ohio provides Permanency Champions – stable, mature adults who serve as mentors to youth in foster care while they are waiting for a permanent adoptive family. Because it is recognized that not all youth will be adopted, Permanency Champions also advocate for and provide support to teens if they transition into adulthood rather than to a family of their own.  The goal is lifetime relationships that support a youth within his or her permanent family and enrich both the teen and the mentor.

Impact of Trauma on Engaging and Preparing Youth for Permanency

All youth in the child welfare system have experienced and survived traumatic experiences. A trauma-informed perspective is foundational to best practice in actively engaging and preparing youth for permanency. Research has established that long after they are over, traumatic experiences continue to take priority in the thoughts, emotions, and behavior of youth. The experience of trauma may lead to psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive disorder, and anxiety disorders and can have profound effects on developmental progression, relationships with peers and family members, academic achievement and motivation for learning, memory, and full participation in society. These outcomes are especially likely when traumatic experiences are intense or prolonged, and the youth faces substantial post-trauma adversity for an extended period. 

Using this trauma lens to understand the range of day-to-day feelings, fears, attitudes and behaviors of youth in the child welfare system is absolutely critical to successful youth permanency work. Best practice requires that young people in foster care who have experienced trauma are provided with a relational casework approach that promotes healing and resolution in addition to more in-depth trauma-informed assessment, diagnosis and treatment as necessary to support their overall emotional and relational health and well-being.

The working relationship that builds with youth while engaging and preparing them for permanency can be highly therapeutic as caseworkers:

• Help youth understand their situation and communicating hopefulness for the future
• Give youth voice in their planning, helping them to regain a sense of efficacy and control
• Validate the universal need to be connected to family, identify and provide family opportunities
• Acknowledge the importance of birth family, even when abuse and neglect were experienced
• Structure safety into relationships, prevent separation and/or restore emotional cut-offs
• Re-connect youth with lost relationships and restore broken ones
• Repair prior parent and caregiver attachment relationships and build new ones

When further trauma assessment and evidence-based trauma treatment is indicated, the results can be highly supportive to ongoing youth engagement and permanency preparation in the following ways:

• Providing emotional regulation skills and strategies to manage overwhelming feelings
• Reducing ambivalence about exploring parent and family relationships
• Enabling youth to risk trusting adults in a position of parental authority and decision-making
• Decreasing symptomatic behaviors and increasing success of family relationships
• Clarifying the youth’s needs so all team members can be well-informed in order to contribute to permanency planning and decision-making

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network recommends that child welfare agencies:

• Train staff and foster parents about trauma assessment, evidence-based trauma treatment, and the importance of traumatic reminders.
• Gather complete information about a youth’s trauma history to understand the impact of trauma on a child’s development, skills, and competencies and share this trauma history profile with foster and permanent parents to assist the child with organizing his/her experiences and developing a sense of continuity about his/her life.
• Refer youth in foster care with trauma histories for assessment and evidence-based trauma interventions when indicated.

State and Local Examples

Florida developed a Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit which provides child welfare staff with knowledge about a trauma-informed child welfare system, the 9 Essential Elements of Trauma-Informed Child Welfare Practice, and how to apply the Essential Elements in their casework practice.

Illinois developed specialized training for foster parents and other caregivers that focuses on understanding, recognizing and helping youth heal from child trauma. 

Tennessee, with a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services, has created the Tennessee Network for Trauma-Informed and Evidence-Based Systems (TN-TIES) project to improve services among youth in foster care in the state. The TN-TIES program goals are to develop a coordinated and integrated system of trauma screening, referrals, and communications; disseminate evidence-based treatment models and resources; and impact policy to include trauma-informed practices.

Wisconsin received federal approval in 2012 to create a foster care “Medical Home” program in the southeastern region of the state which will develop individualized treatment plans that address a youth’s trauma-related needs.