Family Visiting in the L.E.SCreating a true partnership to

enhance the visiting experience for families in foster care to

move towards permanency

Family Visiting Statistics

• Since Fiscal Year 2011, our Visiting Hosts and Coaches have participated in 445 Family Visits, and the work group has provided space or supported 38 Visiting Sessions– Examples of supporting visits

include free tickets to the circus, inviting families to our holiday party, etc.

What’s going to work?

Teamwork!-Borrowed from Wonder Pets

Family Visiting Work Group Members

• Typhani Carter, New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

• Keith Coles, Catholic Guardian Society and Home Bureau

• Rachel Rapoport, Children’s Museum of the Arts• Visiting Hosts: Jessica Gonzalez, Johann Marte,

Jessica Pearson• Osman Mat, ACS Office of Family Visiting• Lolita Silva-Vazquez and Jacqueline DiCarlo,

Lower Eastside Service Center

Stages of Growth for Work Group

• Stage I (2008 to Early 2009): Getting buy-in from partnering foster care agencies

• Stage II (Mid-2009 to early 2010): Receiving referrals from foster care agencies and Manhattan Division of Child Protection but not the right referrals

• Stage III (Mid 2010 to Mid 2011): Receiving the right referrals, but families are not progressing due to insufficient involvement from agency staff

• Stage IV (Late 2011 to Present): Working more closely with agency staff to move families toward Permanency

Getting Buy-in from the Agencies

• Persistent outreach done to agency staff

• Created a Visiting Host Questionnaire for Visiting Hosts to fill out for the case planners after each visit

• Relying on our Community Partners to find good Visiting Hosts

• Visiting Coaches recruited and trained for parents who needed more guidance

Screening of Appropriate Referrals • Created a referral form to screen appropriate referrals

for Hosts, Coaches, or other programs– Modified from ACS Office of Family Visiting

• Case planners asked additional questions by work group members, if questions not answered adequately

Moving Towards Permanency: A Work in Progress

• Work group members are working with staff at foster care agency to get line staff more actively involved in each case

• If progress is not shown to move towards unsupervised visits, timelines and deadlines are established

• Visiting Hosts also trained to record more observations of parent-child interactions when questionnaire is filled out

Attributions to our Success

• Starting out not only with just one agency, but one particular unit within that agency

• Wonderful Partners:– NYSPPCC for their technical expertise– Children’s Museum of the Arts for their space and

ARTogether program

• Great group of Visiting Hosts and Coaches

• Sharing Visiting Coaches from other CPPs

• Having a point person at the foster care agency who is responsive to our concerns

Moving Forward:

• Further Collaboration with foster care agency staff– Working more closely with staff to create realistic timelines

that will move families towards unsupervised visits

• A better relationship with Family Court so that they understand how we support families

• Incorporating more of our Community Partners to support families during supervised, loosely monitored, and unsupervised visits– Early Head Start, Butterflies, NYCELL, Community Swim, Art

Spaces, programs at community gardens