'You're not alone': New Summit court program helps parents reunite with children

Sacramento County's Cultural Broker Program places trained community advocates between Child Protective Services and Black families to prevent children from entering foster care. They work directly with families from the moment CPS gets involved until the case closes. They attend meetings with social workers, translate complex bureaucratic processes and advocate for parents. Of 552 families referred to cultural brokers between 2018-2023, 90% had successful outcomes, meaning children were reunited with parents, adopted, or placed in permanent living arrangements.

Hennepin County implemented a comprehensive overhaul of its child protection system, implementing a multi-pronged approach including increasing the staff and budget, splitting caseloads more evenly among workers, and instituting a two-month training program for new hires with ongoing education throughout their careers. The overhaul ensures families receive more comprehensive support, including therapy and addiction treatment services, reducing repeat cases and improving family outcomes.

A pilot program within the child welfare system in Philadelphia is providing wraparound services for parents at risk of losing custody of their children. The multi-disciplinary services include an attorney, social workers, and a peer advocate in addition to services that help stabilize families such as housing, employment, and addiction treatment. Similar programs in New York City and Washington state show significant reductions of time spent by children in foster care and increased rates of reunification - saving money and reducing trauma.

Hennepin County Court, serving Minneapolis, MN and the surrounding area, has developed a co-parenting court – helping unmarried parents work together to raise their children, work through issues, and strengthen their partnership. Born out of a need for an alternative to family court, where individuals – typically fathers – are just given a child support amount to pay before being on their way, the program offers ongoing support, including co-developing a childcare plan to qualifying parents.

My Two Aunties assists Indigenous families to help keep children out of foster care. The group provides parenting support and education, seeks to build relationships between families and their culture and also works to repair intergenerational trauma that can lead to creating an unsafe environment for children. In 2022, the program served 97 families and held 411 parenting classes and interest in the program is continuously growing.

Court-appointed special advocates (CASAs) are trained volunteers appointed by a judge to represent a child’s best interests throughout the foster care system and adoption court processes. CASAs spend time with the children to get to know them and their situations, including their medical, psychological and social needs, to advocate on their behalf. The CASA program began in the 1970s; today, there are about 1,000 CASA programs nationwide.

In order to address child abuse and neglect community members got together to form: R.O.C.K Mat Su, a collaborative organization composed of several organizations that has “teamed up with government agencies, schools and judges to develop a comprehensive solution.” So far, they have been able to train 10 schools to become trauma informed schools, trained over 2,000 people in the community, and created an alternative judicial court for children that prioritizes family reunification.

In Uganda, where international adoptions and orphanages are the most present form of child welfare, nonprofits like Reunite, Alternative Care Initiatives-Uganda, and CALM Africa are shifting the country to a welfare model focused on family reunification and community-based foster care. Although pilot programs are still small, there is also a focus on closing technical loopholes and providing practical support to encourage foster care programs.

Parent Encouragement Programs teach parents new ways to connect and communicate with their children, helping them become more understanding and less authoritarian. Research shows that after seven weeks of classes, parents report increased satisfaction in their relationships with their children.

Temporary Alternative Placement Agreements (TAPA) allow parents struggling with addiction to enter a drug-treatment program and connect them with parenting resources and support to help them maintain custody of their children. Under a TAPA parents have a say in who their children stay with while they're seeking treatment, rather than losing custody altogether. Participants say TAPAs are far less traumatic and help hold them accountable as they’re required to sign an agreement to uphold at the start of the program.