Program Outcome: Permanency

Public housing agencies (PHAs) administer FUP in partnership with Public Child Welfare Agencies (PCWAs). The PCWA initially determines if the family or youth meets the FUP eligibility requirements, certifies that the family or youth is eligible, and refers those families and youth to the PHA. Once the PCWA makes the referral, the PHA places the FUP applicant on its Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) waiting list and determines whether the family meets HCV program eligibility requirements, including income eligibility. The PHA conducts all other processes relating to voucher issuance and administration. The program does not require PCWAs to provide supportive services for families; however, PCWAs may make them available to families as well. Examples of the skills targeted by these supportive services can include money management skills, job preparation, educational counseling, and proper nutrition and meal preparation.

NTDC, the comprehensive no-cost curriculum, is designed to tackle separation, loss, grief, and trauma in adoption and foster care. This cutting-edge resource offers adoptive, kinship, and foster parents flexible education that aims to empower them over the course of time and at the right time. Training is provided both as a synchronous classroom-based learning experience and through asynchronous “Right-Time” online modules that are available at any time for NTDC participants to build further knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy. While this training originated from key concepts to support children with intense service needs, it is designed to be used in any out-of-home placement, including with kin or adoptive caregivers.

Note: NTDC has also adapted to address the unique needs of indigenous communities; however, this separate manualized version is not part of this program review.

Nurturing Skills™ for Families (NSF) is a model of the Nurturing Parenting® Programs designed to prevent child abuse and neglect by addressing key areas that contribute to a safe and healthy family environment. The program aims to promote positive family practices, enhance parental knowledge and skills, improve communication and problem-solving abilities, build emotional resilience, strengthen family bonds, address risk factors, foster community support, and encourage accountability.

This flexible program is tailored to meet the needs of families with children ranging from prenatal to 19 years old. The Lesson Guide for Parents contains over 80 individual lessons presented across 16 competency areas, with core competency lessons forming the program's basic structure. Additional lessons allow parent educators to customize the program to suit the specific needs of each group or family.

Although the program representatives state that the model can be used with all families, it is only rated in the Interventions for Abusive Behaviors on research with families involved in the child welfare system.

Indiana Family Preservation Services (INFPS) are services designed to work with families who have had a substantiated incident of abuse and/or neglect, where the department of child services/child welfare services believes the child(ren) can remain in the home with their caregiver(s) with the introduction of appropriate services to the family. These services may also be utilized in the absence of a substantiated abuse or neglect allegation if there is an active in-home case. This service shall be for the entire family.

SAFE@Home is a community-based in-home safety management and parenting assistance service for families with unsafe children, who need protection. The program is designed to establish collaborative partnerships between public child welfare and community family service agencies for providing family-centered in-home service. Service delivery is intended to ensure children are kept safe in the least intrusive way possible, while also supporting a public child welfare caseworker’s ability to help caregivers make behavioral changes. SAFE@Home safety managers, employed by community family service agencies, assist in developing and managing in-home safety plans. Additionally, safety managers take a lead role in providing direct, often intensive, in-home safety services for parents/ caregivers and children. In-home safety services are individualized to sufficiently manage safety threats and provide basic parenting assistance, so children can remain home during the time that families are receiving ongoing public child welfare intervention.

Providence House Family Preservation Crisis Nursery provides emergency shelter and crisis care for children aged birth through twelve years old. Additionally, it offers support to their parents/guardians through comprehensive case management services, counseling, parent support and education, links to community services, and up to twelve months of aftercare support following their child’s discharge from the nursery. The Crisis Nursery offers free shelter, 24/7 daily care, personal necessities, medical care, and developmental and educational enrichment to children for the duration of their stay, which can last from 24 hours up to 90 days until they are safely reunited with their own family or admitted in other long-term care settings. The Pediatric Crisis Nursery provides additional services to children with medical needs.

MST-BSF is an ecologically based treatment model for families involved with child welfare services due to physical abuse and/or neglect plus parental substance misuse. MST-BSF is designed to provide all families with intensive safety planning, Reinforcement-Based Treatment for adult substance misuse, a relapse prevention group, and clarification of the abuse or neglect. On an individualized, as-needed basis, children and adults receive treatment for clinical challenges such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), parenting, and family communication. To assure model fidelity, an array of quality assurance procedures is integrated into the model. The model is operated through a team consisting of a supervisor, a family resource specialist who focuses on basic needs, and three therapists that carry a caseload maximum of 4 families. Services are provided a minimum of 3 times per week plus there are on-call services for crises available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. A psychiatrist is available 10-20% time. A close working relationship with child welfare services is important.

The Kinship Caregiver Engagement and Support Program is a trauma-informed, triad-centric, child welfare intervention that aims to increase the likelihood of a placement with relatives or fictive kin. In turn, this placement can lead to improved outcomes in safety, well-being, and permanency for children. Additionally, the kinship placement ideally facilitates higher levels of devotion to meeting placement goals for the entire family, as the kinship caregiver has more insight into family dynamics than a traditional foster parent would possess. Kinship Caregiver Engagement and Support Program is designed to assist the local Child Welfare agency in:

• Identifying kinship family supports
• Providing education on kinship licensure processes
• Finding emergency kinship identification for placement options for children being removed
• Finding kinship identification for children in congregate care
• Increasing culturally and racially relevant placements

The Kinship Navigator (CHN-KN) Children’s Home Network provides supportive services to any relative or nonrelative raising a child on a full-time basis when a parent is unable or unwilling to provide care. Nonrelative refers to someone unrelated who has a significant or family-like relationship to the child. This program provides services to families regardless of their status with the child welfare system, therefore serving informal and formal families. CHN-KN provides a centralized intake line, comprehensive assessments, family conferencing, and navigation services that include securing concrete needs, enrollment in public assistance, linkage to key community resources, development of informal and formal supports, service and crisis planning, support groups, and follow-up contacts at 3-month intervals postcompletion of the program.

Intensive Alternative Family Treatment (IAFT®) is a specialized family type, therapeutic treatment foster care service provided to children/youth and their families in a community setting founded on (14) IAFT® Practice Elements. Individuals with a need for this level of care often present with challenging behaviors; need an out-of-home placement; will benefit from clinically focused treatment to avoid placement in a higher level of care; and/or are making a planned transition from a more restrictive setting. The desired outcome is to exhibit improved individual and family system functioning upon successful return to a natural living home/least restrictive setting after treatment. IAFT® provides a trauma-informed, structured, therapeutic, and supervised home environment to decrease problem behaviors and improve the level of functioning for children/youth and their families or natural supports. Through continuous quality improvement activities and quarterly compliance reviews, fidelity to the IAFT model and its 14 practice elements is monitored.