Family to Family (F2F) - Detailed Report

Family to Family (F2F) works with child welfare agencies to develop an organizational structure with work groups, a steering committee, and advisory committee. The goal is for this structure to be inclusive with participation of all relevant partners in order to create a change culture in jurisdictions that moves system improvement over time. The structure can be modified over time to build on the work and continuously work to improve and strengthen policy, management, organization, practice, and ultimately outcomes.

The four core strategies:

• Team Decision Making: All placement decisions are made with families through a structured meeting and neutral facilitator. With the permission and agreement of the parent(s), these decisions are made with those parties from the community or other agencies that they bring as support, Children can be involved in meeting if age/maturity appropriate and their support is needed.
• Building Community Partnerships: Long-term way of developing a community-based child welfare approach. Child Welfare initiates the effort to reach out and ultimately include all parties that touch the lives of children and families in the work to keep families together whenever possible and ensure expedited permanence and safety. Targets specific communities and can result in development of collaboratives within communities that ultimately lead the work.
• Recruitment, Development and Support of Resource Families: Designed to support current resource families (foster parents, kinship caregivers, and other caregivers) and to recruit more through multiple strategies in partnership with the collaboratives or other partnership models formed. Resource families are also intended to be included as full partners in this work and to receive the information needed to mentor parents as well as to provide strong developmental support to the children in their care.
• Self-Evaluation: In California, the outcomes of the F2F initiative are embedded in the State's Outcomes and Accountability System. In addition, the Center for Social Services at U.C. Berkeley provides technical assistance to F2F counties for this strategy. The strategy is designed to use data about key outcomes as the way to measure, support, and move change over time. This is not intended to measure one child welfare jurisdiction to another, but rather to use data as the core of long- term continuous quality improvement. Includes building capacity to dig deeper and understand data and to share, communicate, and analyze that data with the partners involved in the system reform work.

The additional California strategies are:

• The Connected by 25 Initiative that is focused on system improvement with youth aged 14-24.
• Work with LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) children and families that is supported through Wellspring Advisors in New York in partnership with Legal Services for Children;
• Work with the Family Violence Prevention Fund focused on improving practice in particular with Team Decision Making when domestic violence is either a presenting issue or emerging in the course of the initial assessment.

In 2006, work was begun to address issues with Immigrant Children and Families and the Child Welfare system as well as with Children of Incarcerated Parents. The goal of all this work is rooted in the development of initiative driven system improvement grounded in values, principles, and outcomes and supported by tools, training, and technical assistance.

The Foundation provides some grant support and technical assistance with all of the strategies as well as assistance with organizational development and strategic planning. In California, the Family to Family initiative is supported by the Stuart Foundation, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, and Casey Family Programs in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and is currently in 26 counties representing 88% of the children in care in the state.

Family to Family (F2F) is rated a "3 – Promising Research Evidence" on the Scientific Rating Scale based on the published, peer-reviewed research available. The practice must have at least one study utilizing some form of control (e.g., untreated group, placebo group, matched wait list) establishing the practice's benefit over the placebo, or found it to be comparable to or better than an appropriate comparison practice. For more information on the rating of a “3 – Promising Research Evidence,” please see the Scientific Rating Scale.

Usher, C., Wildfire, J., & Gibbs, D. (1999). Measuring performance in child welfare: Secondary effects of success, Child Welfare, 78, 31-52.

Type of Study: Non-equivalent comparison group (Alabama only)
Number of participants: 18,104 (Alabama), 12,653 (Ohio)
Population:

Age Range: 0 to 17
Race/Ethnicity: Not given
Status (e.g., foster care, CW): Children entering out-of-home care

Location/Institution: Alabama and Ohio
Summary: (To include comparison groups, outcomes, measures, notable limitations) This study describes the observed patterns of placement for children subsequent to initial out-of-home placement in two states which implemented the Family to Family program. Counties in which the program was begun were compared to counties in which it was not in use. Overall, patterns in Alabama showed that implementation of the program was associated with few out-of-home placements and faster reunification. This effect was largest in the earliest years of implementation and declined in following years, which might have been due to a higher proportion of children with greater needs entering the out-of-home care system because children with fewer risk factors were placed in-home immediately. In Ohio, placement in the most restrictive settings declined, group homes were replaced with foster homes and more children were placed with relatives. Limitations include lack of matched comparison groups and possible differences between counties initially selected for the program implementation and those that were not.
Length of post-intervention follow-up: None

Usher, C. L., Gibbs, D. A., Wildfire, J. B., & Gogan, H. C. (1998). The evaluation of Family to Family. Research Triangle Park, NC: Research Triangle Institute. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on June 26, 2008 at http://www.unc.edu/~lynnu/f2feval.htm.

There are a number of tools that can be downloaded from the Annie E. Casey Foundation website, http://www.aecf.org/Home/MajorInitiatives/Family%20to%20Family.aspx. These include tools on each of the four core strategies.

There is also a California Family to Family website www.f2f.ca.gov that has many resources.