Permanency Planning

Permanency planning is the process of assessing and preparing a child for long term care when in out-of-home placements such as kinship, foster care or institutions. A care plan must centre on what is in the child’s best interests, and therefore requires an ongoing assessment of the child and her needs. A guardian may be appointed as a further protection of a child’s rights.

The ultimate goal of permanency planning is to ensure a secure environment with lifelong bonds that will support the child into adulthood. For most children this will be provided by their birth parents and relatives, and therefore family reunification should be the primary goal. Where reunification is not possible or suitable for the child, adoption or Islamic kafalah is usually the next best option since it offers more stability and enables the child to develop a lasting attachment to carers.

Each child is an individual and brings a unique set of requirements. The choice of placement must therefore consider the child’s cultural and religious background, abilities and any special needs, attachments to significant people and how such relationships can be maintained, their education, health and overall development. Ideally, children should be kept close to their original communities in order help maintain their identity and to reduce disruption to their everyday lives.

While short term care such as fostering can provide a safe place for a child and time to assess their needs, it is often an unsuitable long term option since it is a temporary arrangement that is prone to breakdown. Social workers or other child protection paraprofessionals in the community must determine the use of short term care and the development of longer term plans with the full participation of the child, birth family, and prospective caretakers, providing opportunities for contact with each other, and preparing all for moves.

All placements should be monitored regularly to ensure the child is safe and his/her physical, emotional, and educational needs are met. This includes children who have been recently returned to their birth family or who are newly placed with adoptive parents. Monitoring enables the provision of family support services, and helps to reduce placement breakdown and incidences of abuse.

The resources in this section focus on the factors that should be considered when planning a child’s care, and the advantages and disadvantages of placement options.

Displaying 71 - 80 of 231

Browse Other Topics

Previous life experiences and the vulnerability of children adopted from out-of-home care: The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences and child welfare decision making

Susan Tregeagle, Lynne Moggach, Helen Trivedi, Harriet Ward - Children and Youth Services Review, 14 Nov 2018

This paper presents findings on the previous life experiences of an entire cohort of ‘difficult to place’ adoptees who were placed in Australia over 26 years.

View Article

Practices to improve communication between birth parents and permanent families

Collings, Susan; Neil, Elsbeth and Wright, Amy Conley - Advances in Social Work and Welfare Education, 01 Nov 2018

This article explores casework practices developed for use in child welfare placements that may be successfully applied to New South Wales to help build the practical skills needed to facilitate openness, empathy and respectful interactions between children in permanent care and their birth families.

View Article

A Critical Overview Of The Significance Of Power And Power Relations In Practice with Children In Foster Care: Evidence From An Irish Study

MCGregor, Caroline, Devaney, Carmel and Moran, Lisa - Child care in practice, 29 Oct 2018

This paper is based on findings from an Irish study of permanence and stability outcomes for children in long-term care which involved biographical narrative interviews with 27 children, young people, parents and foster carers.

View Article

A systematic review of the effectiveness of interagency and cross-system collaborations in the United States to improve child welfare outcomes

Ijeoma Nwabuzor Ogbonnaya & Annie J. Keeney - Children and Youth Services Review, 10 Oct 2018

The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize the effects of interagency and cross-system collaboration aimed to improve child welfare-involved children and family outcomes related to safety, permanency, and well-being.

View Article

Outcomes for Permanence and Stability for Children in Care in Ireland: Implications for Practice

Carmel Devaney, Caroline McGregor, Lisa Moran - The British Journal of Social Work, 24 Sep 2018

This paper reports on a qualitative study of outcomes for permanence and stability for children in long-term care in Ireland.

View Article

Outcomes for Permanence and Stability for Children in Care in Ireland: Implications for Practice

Carmel Devaney, Caroline McGregor, Lisa Moran - The British Journal of Social Work, 24 Sep 2018

This paper reports on a qualitative study of outcomes for permanence and stability for children in long-term care in Ireland.

View Article

The role of out-of-home caregivers in the achievement of child welfare permanency

Colleen C. Katz, Marina Lalayants, Jon D. Phillips - Children and Youth Services Review, 22 Sep 2018

This longitudinal study is the first to evaluate the ways in which out-of-home (OOH) caregivers influence permanency outcomes for children in the foster care system while controlling for child-level and parent-level characteristics.

View Article

Impact of Emergency Shelter Utilization and Kinship Involvement on Children’s Behavioral Outcomes

Lauren A. Hindt, Grace Jhe Bai, Brynn M. Huguenel, Anne K. Fuller, Scott C. Leon - Child Maltreatment, 09 Sep 2018

The present longitudinal study explored the impact of initial emergency shelter placement on long-term externalizing behavior (i.e., aggression, delinquency) and internalizing symptom (i.e., anxiety, depression) trajectories, and whether kinship involvement moderated the effect of shelter placement on behavioral outcomes.

View Article

Coaching Parents About Children's Needs and Navigating the Child Protection and Other Systems

Frank Ainsworth and Patricia Hansen - Children Australia, 25 Jun 2018

This article reviews developments in the Australian NSW child protection system which aim to reduce the number of children in state care.

View Article

Measurement and correlates of foster care placement moves

Sarah A. Font, Kierra M.P. Sattler, Elizabeth T. Gershoff - Children and Youth Services Review, 20 Jun 2018

In this study, the authors used a two-year Texas foster care entry cohort to examine the extent to which children experience “progress moves”, such as moving to a sibling placement or to live with a relative, versus non-progress moves, such as moving due to risk of abuse.

View Article