The third core component in youth permanency practice is a team decision making process that embodies shared planning and decision making by youth, parents, family members and other key individuals in the youth’s life, as well as professionals.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported, based on the second round of the Child and Family Services Reviews, that permanency is expedited through the use of family team decision making meetings.

This component fully incorporates active youth engagement which is critical to the team decision making process. It is also important to prepare and assist youth in taking an active role on the team, including engaging them in identifying potential team members, selecting specific safety-, permanency- or well-being-related topics for team meeting agendas, and providing supports that aid or increase their full participation.

Because the goal of permanency is safe, legally secure, lifelong parenting and family belonging, the planning process cannot happen in a vacuum with the youth. While the youth’s needs and voice must drive the process, the role of parents and family members is also essential in order to achieve a timely and successful permanency outcome. Parents and family must be included to the fullest extent possible – including birth parents and other key family members, the youth’s current caregiver(s), other caring and supportive adults with significance to the youth, and the potential permanent parent as soon as he or she is known. A true collaborative teaming process also brings professionals to the table to plan together with the youth and family – particularly those professionals who could override or derail a team decision if they don’t agree with it.

It should be noted that while youth engagement is essential, decisions are not made solely by the youth – similar to other types of life decisions (medical treatment, school attendance, getting a driver’s license, etc.) that involve a minor. Facilitating a team permanency planning process with active youth engagement means maintaining a delicate balance of listening to and being guided by the youth’s feelings, hopes and wishes while honoring the perspective of those in a parental role and with parental responsibility for the youth – such as the state as substitute parent, the current caregiver or the adult who will be the youth’s permanent parent.  

There are several team decision making models that jurisdictions may use in developing and implementing this practice component. These team decision making approaches include:

FGDM (Family Group Decision Making)

FGDM is a decision making process to which members of the family group, including youth, are invited and joined by members of their informal network, community groups and the child welfare agency that has become involved in the family’s life. 

• History.  FGDM is based on traditional practices in many cultures; the term was first coined by Drs. Gale Burford and Joan Pennell in their implementation of FGDM in Canada as a way to describe a process that was similar to, but slightly different from, the family group conference (FGC) legislated in New Zealand in 1989.
• Facilitation.  In FGDM, an independent (non-case-carrying) coordinator is responsible for convening the family group meeting with child welfare agency personnel. 
• Role of the Family Group. The child welfare staff recognizes the family group as their key decision-making partners.  The coordinator conducts the preparation of group members for the meeting and facilitates the family meeting.   Family groups have the opportunity to meet on their own, without child welfare staff and other non-family members present, to work through the information that they have been given and formulate their responses and plans.  When agency concerns are adequately addressed, preference is given to a family group’s plan over any other possible plan.
• Decision Making.  Meetings have four phases: the introduction phase, the information sharing phase, the private family time phase, and the plan finalization phase.  Once the first two phases are complete and the family understands the issues to be addressed and the resources available to them, the professionals leave the room so the family can develop a comprehensive case plan for the child. The family then presents the plan to the child welfare agency representatives and other professionals; families lead the decision-making but the plan must be one to which the family and the child welfare agency agree. The coordinator reiterates the agreed-upon next steps to be completed post-meeting.
• Follow Up.  Following the family team meeting, the core purpose of the follow-up phase is to track the implementation of the plan. The family group and others can be reconvened at any juncture to update or revise the plan to ensure that the plans are resulting in the agreed upon outcomes.  The family takes ownership of achieving the outcomes, complemented by the agency’s support and the court’s ordering of services.
• Youth Perspective. An article summarizing youth reflections on family relationships and permanency after a family group decision making meeting can be accessed here: americanhumane.org Retrieved August 3, 2013.

FTC (Family Team Conferencing)

FTC grew out of a class action settlement agreement in Alabama in the 1990s and responded to the principles articulated in that agreement: a high degree of family involvement in planning and decision-making; creation of strengths- and needs-based individualized plans; and highly coordinated services delivery and services matched to each family’s unique needs. 

• Wraparound Approach.  FTCs reflect the approach of Wraparound Child and Family Team Meetings, individualized planning principles of the Individualized Education Programs (IEP) process, engagement approaches from intensive family preservation services and the person-centered philosophy of developmental disabilities practice.  FTCs, as part of a larger model of practice, seek to help children and families to achieve basic goals but also to develop a durable team that can sustain the family over time after formal supports conclude. FTCs are designed to mirror the way families form their own helping systems to meet needs and solve problems.
• The Family Team.  The family team is formed at the earliest period of system involvement and continues to be active beyond case closure.  The team is responsible for case planning and key decision making.  The family determines team composition; team size varies depending on the family’s needs. FTCs are forums in which parents, youth, extended family and professionals participate in crafting, implementing, or changing individualized child and family plans.
• Facilitation.  The primary caseworker for the child and family, having received family engagement and teaming training, usually serves as the FTC facilitator. A specific structure guides the meeting process which is, first and foremost, a planning process. In FTC meetings, the team reaches a working agreement about the nature of problems facing the family and determines what success will look like. Any non-negotiable items are clearly identified as part of the working agreement, including an emphasis on what happens between FTC meetings. 
• Planning.  Regular team meetings track progress and adapt plans to changing circumstances. Each FTC concludes with the question, “What could go wrong with this plan?”

LF (Lifelong Families, which uses Permanency Teaming as the Core Model Component)

The Lifelong Families model was developed by Casey Family Services specifically to facilitate permanency for a treatment foster care population (older youth with high-end mental health and behavioral needs).

• The Permanency Teaming Model.  The Lifelong Families’ model core component of Permanency Teaming includes a blend of meetings – individual, joint and large team – to engage children and youth and their families in comprehensive planning and collaborative decision-making. In the Lifelong Families, used by the New England and Baltimore City-based Casey Family Services divisions from 2005 through 2012, a social worker builds a team of individuals who:  1) will be most affected by decisions that are made and 2) may have the power to "make or break" decisions.
• The Team.  Generally, team members include the youth, parents, extended family members, foster parents and/or caregivers, other adults significant to the youth, the legal custodian/state agency and key professionals such as the youth's therapist, attorney, GAL, and residential treatment provider.  The team is then engaged in a process aimed at identifying, developing, and sustaining legal family relationships.
• Facilitation.  Facilitated by the child’s social worker, Permanency Teaming employs a strategic blend of individual and joint meetings together with regular large team meetings to plan for the youth's need for safety, well- being, and permanence through reunification, adoption, or legal guardianship.
• Focus on Youth.  Using the youth’s permanency team to coordinate and oversee the other critical model components, Lifelong Families prepares youth for permanence by clarifying life events, resolving conflicts and integrating important relationships; prepares parents for unconditional commitment through full disclosure of the youth’s needs; and carefully transitions children and youth to a permanent parent(s) with a plan for ongoing family connections and post-permanency supports.
• Other Components.  The Lifelong Families model also employs best practices in family finding, concurrent planning and specialized recruitment as well as evidence-based trauma assessment and intervention to create lasting family relationships that are safe and provide for a child's long-term well-being.  This model is currently being implemented and evaluated primarily with a treatment foster care population and is being tested for applicability to the full range of child welfare case situations.

TDM (Team Decision-making Meetings)

TDM was developed in 1992 as a key strategy of Family to Family, a nearly 20-year initiative funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

• Structure and Purpose.  The model emphasizes the engagement of family and community members in placement-related decision making, a critical aspect of child welfare work. Meetings are facilitated by trained, non-caseload carrying staff members. In TDM, child welfare staff, family, and community members work together to assess a family’s strengths and needs, make critical placement decisions, and develop specific safety plans for children at risk. If the team cannot reach consensus on a placement decision, the agency maintains its responsibility and ownership for final decision making.
• Use Across the Life of the Case.  The meetings take on somewhat different forms depending on the stage at which they are used in the child welfare process:  when consideration is being given to a removal, a placement change, or a permanent exit (to reunification, adoption, or guardianship). If meetings are held while a child is in the agency’s care, developing relationships between foster and birth parents is emphasized. (Generally, case planning, assessment, and review functions are secondary concerns in TDMs.)
• Considered-removal Team Decision-making Meetings expands the use of TDM at the front-end of the system to engage the family and community in preventing the removal of children or youth who are at-risk of out-of-home placement.

Teaming for optimal youth permanency outcomes requires full incorporation of concurrent planning, which is defined in the National Resource Center’s A Web-Based Toolkit on Concurrent Planning as:

A process of working towards one legal permanency goal (typically reunification) while at the same time establishing and implementing an alternative permanency goal and plan that are worked on concurrently to move children/youth more quickly to a safe and stable permanent family.   This is a process which involves concurrent rather than sequential permanency planning efforts.  It involves a mix of meaningful family engagement, targeted case practice, and legal strategies aimed at achieving timely permanency, while at the same time establishing and actively working a concurrent permanency plan in case the primary goal cannot be accomplished in a timely manner. It is not a fast track to adoption, but to permanency.

Best practices in concurrent planning as described in the Concurrent Planning Toolkit fully apply to youth permanency practice.   The US Department of Health and Human Services, in its review of the 52 Program Improvement Plans, found that a key strategy for addressing adoption and reunification in the most improved states was concurrent planning policy development implementation or training (8 of the 9 most improved states for adoption and 3 of the 5 most improved states for reunification).

State and Local Examples

Clark County, Nevada uses Child and Family Team Meetings as part of its Case Management Model which consists of Engaging, Teaming, Assessing, Planning, Intervening, and Tracking/Adapting.

Connecticut is implementing a customized approach to teaming statewide that blends two models described above – a point-in-time Considered-Removal Team Decision-Making meeting for cases at risk of system entry, and if placement is necessary, ongoing facilitation of Permanency Teaming (the core model component of Lifelong Families) until the youth achieves legal permanency. 

Iowa uses Family Team Decision-Making (sometimes referred to as Individualized Course of Action-ICA) which includes various types of family team meetings, such as family unity meetings and family group conferencing. These interventions are used in the decision making process for youth and their families and extended family as well as community participants, services providers and legal representatives.

New York City uses Family Team Conferencing to engage youth, families and communities in service planning and making critical permanency decisions.

Pennsylvania uses a blend of Family Group Decision Making and the Family Unity Model as a strengths-based empowerment model designed to join the wider family group, including the youth, relatives, friends, community members, and others, to collectively make decisions to plan for the youth’s permanency. 

Texas has incorporated Family Group Decision Making into its Child Protective Services program and its permanency planning for youth in foster care.