Posts Tagged: foster care

Plan of My Own — I didn’t think I needed services but I did them anyway

I will never forget the day I returned home from an appointment and saw a note on my door saying that my children had been removed from home. I thought, “Did they take all of my kids?”

When I opened the door none of my six children were inside.

I immediately called the worker and found out that she had taken the two youngest, my 8-year-old son and my 4-year-old daughter because they were home alone.

I was … Read More

Power to the Parent — A NYC program puts service planning in the hands of parents and provides peer support

Parents fighting to reunite with their kids often feel like they have no say in their family’s service planning and are given services without being asked what they need. Many also feel alone in the process.

Several child protective agencies across the nation have responded by implementing family conferencing and parent advocate programs.

Michael Arsham, director of The Office of Advocacy for NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services, spoke to Rise about NYC’s Enhanced Family Conferencing Initiative (EFCI), … Read More

Group Think — When parents are supported to participate, workers can make better decisions

Recently, I facilitated a Family Team Meeting with a mother who was going through tremendous stress. Her partner had recently died and she’d been diagnosed with a serious illness. She also suffered from anxiety and depression

Up until these crises in her life, she’d worked, had an apartment, cared for her daughter. But after,
she started losing interest in life and hoarding belongings in ways that were dangerous. Her daughter, 12, had developmental and cognitive disabilities. Eventually, … Read More

Case Control — Your rights in service planning

Parents who feel powerless during the service planning process often accept services, schedules and other demands placed on them by the child welfare system that they can’t do or don’t believe will be helpful because they aren’t informed or are too afraid to speak up. It’s important and empowering for parents to know that they have rights in their family’s planning and how to assert them.

Rise spoke to Kaela Economos, social work director at Brooklyn Defender … Read More

Truth Without Fear — When your child’s in care, honesty and dishonesty are both risky

Earlier this year, I sat down with a mother, her case planner and her CPS investigator.
I was the supervisor on the case. The CPS worker began by stating that the mother was suffering from paranoia and because of that, wasn’t allowing her son to go to school.

The mother shook her head in disagreement but waited until the CPS worker had finished talking. Then I said that I had seen her shaking her head and asked … Read More

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