The child welfare system serve
many functions in our communities, but its primary function is to reunify
children from the foster care to their biological families or kinship care.
Creating a successful reunification program is essential to providing stability
and hope for these children. The reunification process has several working definitions
and usually when people think about reunification, they think about children
going home to be reunified with their biological parents or kin members, but
that is not the case. I came across this definition and I thought it was unique.
According to the definition, “Family reunification aims to help each child and family
to achieve and maintain, at any given time, their optimum level of reconnections
from full re-entry into the family to other forms of contact, such as visiting
that affirm a child membership in the family (Pine, Warsh and Maluccio, 1993). Although the definition may not serve the
traditional purpose that most people think about immediately, it does serve a
purpose. My question is, do you think the
definition can be deceiving for some individuals, for the mere fact that
reunification could be a visit only?
Here are a
couple of tips for a successful reunification process:
Agency leadership that demonstrates a strong commitment to family-centered
practice and champions’ family engagement as a priority.Systems change initiatives and Program Improvement Plans with detailed strategies for achieving family and youth involvement.
Manageable caseloads and workloads allowing caseworkers to attend to the time-consuming efforts of building rapport, engaging families, actively participating in team decision-making meetings, and maintaining frequent, meaningful contact with children and families.
Availability and accessibility of diverse services that can respond specifically to the families identified needs and conditions.
Based on the definition of reunification, I think that it may be a double-edged sword. Since each case for foster care children is different, I think that the defiinition needs to be explained to the individual so that they understand what it means. Because the goal of the welfare system is to reunify the children it is important that "family," whether parents or next of kin have all the information they needs to best help the child. I am sure that the welfare system does not intend to harm the child twice--first by removing the child from the home and second, by not clarifying what reunification means for their [the child/family] situations.
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