When you are moving towards family-based alternative care, the above should be your priority of ranking for placement of children. Individual assessment has to be done for every child to determine what is best in her case. However, through the whole process the thought needs to be: is there any way to return the child to her family safely, if not, can she be placed in foster care, if not, is she better off in a small group home or in a supported living placement (depending on her age and ability). In that order.
The prioritisation of own family over foster care and foster care over small group homes has already been addressed before in a series of blogs (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). In those blogs, the emphasis was on the best interest of the child – which should always be at the centre of decision making – because outcomes for children tend to be best in this order. However, it is important to realise, that there is another, more practical and ‘selfish’ reason to start deinstitutionalisation by first arranging for children to be reunited with their families, followed by arranging foster care placements, etc.
It is very simply a question of a hierarchy of needs. In order for families to be able to take their children home again and care for them, themselves, there will most likely be a need to have a range of support services in place. These will take time, effort and resources to develop, set up and run. A daunting task. One that can make people think that it is somehow easier to go ahead and start with small group homes or foster care. However, what seems to often be forgotten, is that generally speaking children who end up being placed in foster care need most or even all of the support services needed by children who return to their own family, PLUS there is a need to recruit, select, train and monitor foster carers and they may need additional services, not needed by families.
Moving on to small group homes, again, children there will need the services used by children in foster care, PLUS additional services and resources, such as finding a location to accommodate them, furnishing this, setting up duty rosters for caregivers, and so on. So, it most definitely is not easier to set up foster care or group home care first.
It is by starting with family reintegration that you allow yourself to gradually build up services and expertise, without having to have everything ready to go from the start. It will give you a chance to add things bit by bit and find out what is working and what needs to be developed further, along the way. It gives you something like a practice-run, with a lighter load.
So, both to ensure the best outcomes for the children and to allow yourself to gradually get into things, the priority ranking for child placement should be own family, foster family, small group home. Particularly when you start a deinstitutionalisation process from scratch.
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