Family First provides funding to states so they can offer evidence-based prevention services, helping children avoid foster care in the first place and improving the quality of placements for those already there.
ABA is actively engaging with local departments of social services and legal community partners in New York to implement the law effectively, and this article, legal guide and tool will support these efforts.
What is the law?
Growing up within a stable and loving family environment is vitally important to all children, but especially so for those who have been mistreated. The Family First Law shifts the emphasis of our country’s child welfare system toward supporting families’ capacity to care for their children.
Family First provides states with resources to enhance their foster care systems through services like family-based mental health treatment, in-home parent skill-building and kinship navigator assistance. Furthermore, this law removes an income requirement that had previously prevented many families from receiving prevention services. It also offers funding support the recruitment and training of new foster families, such as relatives or non-relatives with positive relationships to the child as well as licensed foster families licensed for caring for kinship children.
Family First law places limits on how long children can remain in residential treatment facilities known as group homes when federal money is involved. According to this legislation, these placements generally last only two weeks without clear plans that ensure the child’s safety and stability. This new limit on group home placements aims to promote family placements as research shows they tend to experience less psychiatric disorders as well as higher grades, completion of college, and eventually secure jobs as adults in later years.
The Family First Act also alters how federal funds are disbursed to foster care children and makes it harder for states to impose their own rules on such services. As one example, courts must give greater weight to parental wishes when making removal decisions and provide additional flexibility when it comes to considering safety and well-being of siblings when making these decisions.
Over the coming months, ABA Center on Children and the Law will assess how Family First provisions are being implemented by our state and local partners across the nation. We will support development of a legal guide on effective implementation, while simultaneously hosting conversations around key topics like family-based treatment, kinship placements, and group home limits with members in state offices across the country.
What are the changes?
Congress recently passed the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), marking one of the biggest shifts in federal child welfare programs and funding in years. It reorients funding toward family-focused services and away from foster care placement incentives. The law creates a significant change in how communities respond to families with children in out-of-home care and highlights how working collaboratively is often more productive than acting individually. The law also ushers in a novel method for service provision by permitting states to receive federal Title IV-E reimbursement for prevention services designed to avoid foster care placements, including evidence-based mental health, substance use and parenting services.
Prior to the Family Foster Protection and Safety Act (FFPSA), children often remained in group homes long after being removed from their parents. Now, thanks to this legislation, state agencies must implement an approach focused on family reunification while remaining as restrictive as possible in terms of placement of congregate care facilities – known as congregate care.
Although advocates applauded this policy shift’s motivations, they cautioned it will require significant changes in state systems. Not just shifting resources but changing culture and altering how DCYF interacts with families and the community is what must occur for this shift to work effectively.
FFPSA mandates that local department of social services prioritize placing relatives together, as well as establish and support kin navigator programs to help families access services and navigate the system. Furthermore, it establishes a new method for determining children in DCYF custody by considering both risk and protective factors; additionally it amends child neglect statute to include a “financial interest” standard that would allow DCYF to pursue legal actions against individuals who fail to provide care for their children and recover assets legally from these individuals.
Though only recently implemented, Child Welfare League of America is already witnessing its effect. They are encouraging states to come up with and implement plans that encompass changes required by this new law.
What are the goals?
The Family First Prevention Services Act, passed in February 2018, shifts the emphasis of child welfare systems away from removal and towards prevention and reunification, prioritizing access to time-limited, evidence-based services for those at risk of entering foster care as well as their families.
Goal of this legislation is to keep children within their families by connecting them with services they require, whether mental health, substance use treatment or parenting skills training. Furthermore, it aims to reduce foster care numbers by restricting funding for placement in congregate care and setting minimum length of stay limits for foster care children.
At the same time, this law seeks to improve quality care in out-of-home placements by mandating agencies provide high-quality short-term clinical interventions for children who present severe and persistent behavioral challenges and use a trauma-informed approach when assessing, understanding and responding to children who have experienced trauma.
This is one of the most significant changes to federal child welfare programs and financing in decades, affecting everything from how cases are assessed to how agencies provide services to children and their families.
Family First legislation mandates states to establish and implement policies guided by its core principles, providing states a framework for making changes while giving local agencies flexibility on how they achieve these goals.
As well as Family First policy, the law contains numerous other initiatives which can have an impact on local practice and outcomes, including an optional Title IV-E prevention program and mandatory limitations on federal funding for placement in non-family settings.
RHF is offering a series of webinars designed to support and inform LDSSs and VAs as they work with legal communities on implementing changes related to Family First Law. These webinars, available via HSLC, highlight specific aspects of this legislation that can help promote family stability, reduce foster care entries/stays/lengths of stay, facilitate reunification/kinship placements.
What are the resources?
The Family First Prevention Services Act was passed by Congress in February 2018 as the most significant reform of child welfare funding and programs since decades. Research has repeatedly shown that children do best when raised within their own families and that child welfare systems should strive to support those families. The law now recognizes this reality. Federal funds will be redeployed to assist families in accessing mental health services, substance use treatment and in-home parenting skills training. It also seeks to improve the wellbeing of foster care children by restricting placements in congregate care and encouraging states to provide more options for residential treatment placement. Finally, it expands access to kin navigator programs in order to assist families with finding resources which meet their needs.
Local child welfare agencies may find this new approach daunting due to its many changes and new requirements. To properly implement these tools, state and local policymakers, agency leaders, private providers, advocates and legal community must work collaboratively; additionally it is imperative that everyone involved understands how these new resources will support families.
To support collaborative efforts, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has designed a tool kit to assist states, districts and counties with getting started with Family First. This tool kit contains briefing materials for leaders as well as discussion guides geared toward advocates and legal professionals – available for download here.
To ensure the Family First philosophy is fully implemented, all stakeholders must participate in training and implementation activities. As such, Family First Legal Group has developed training modules which can be found on our website. These modules aim to offer guidance to social workers, lawyers and advocates regarding family first. These modules provide information on various changes, strategies for identifying and responding to barriers, and suggestions for developing practices to assist families achieve their goals. Each module also comes with a practice manual containing sample forms and checklists which can help track progress towards family first goals.
