Promising Approaches in Child Welfare: Helping Connect Children and Youth in Foster Care to Permanent Family and Relationships through Family Finding and Engagement

Every child and youth who enters the foster care system has a goal of finding a permanent home, also known as “permanency.” The child welfare professionals work to achieve this permanency goal by reunifying the child with their parents or finding another permanent connection, such as adoption or legal guardianship. While permanency is a goal for all children in foster care, recent statistics show a growing trend in the rising number of children “aging out” of the system without a permanent connection to a family. Over 29,000 youths aged out of foster care in 2009, and many of these foster care alumni have to face problems of poverty, lack of health care, limited education, unemployment, homelessness, criminal justice system involvement, and teen pregnancy without the support of permanent families.