Siblings and Permanence CPYP 2006 Annual Conference November 2, 2006 Oakland, CA Wendy Piccus, California Children’s Services Archive Center for Social Services Research – UC Berkeley Erric Garris California State Senate Office of Research Funding for this work is provided by the California Department of Social Services, the Stuart Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

What do we know? On April 1, 2006, there were 78,960 children in CA child welfare supervised foster care. Of these children, 52,191 (66%) had at least one sibling in out- of-home care. Of these children: 23,897 (46%) children were placed with all of their siblings. 35,493 (68%) were placed with all or some of their siblings. 16,698 (32%) were placed with none of their siblings.

What do we know?

Who gets placed with their siblings? Children placed in kinship homes were more likely to be placed with all of their siblings than were children in other placement types. Children placed with a Guardian were also more likely to be placed with all of their siblings than were children in other placement types. Black children were less likely than were children of any other ethnicity to be placed with all of their siblings.

Why Might Siblings Be Important to Children in Care? What do siblings mean to each other? What could placement away from siblings mean to some children? What could placement with siblings provide for children in care?

Youth in care need feelings of identity, connection, belonging and unconditional love.

What about Permanency?

Physical Emotional Legal What is permanency?

Can we balance the different types of permanency? How do we maximize permanency for youth in care while also maintaining sibling connections? What types of permanency can placement with siblings provide? What difficulties to permanency can placement with siblings create?

Family to Family Goals with Implications for Sibling Connections Family to Family Goals: Develop a network of family foster care that is: neighborhood-based culturally sensitive located primarily in communities in which children currently live. Ensure that all children who come into foster care, including teens and brother-and-sister groups, are routinely placed with families.

Family to Family Goals with Implications for Sibling Connections (con’t) Family to Family Goals: Increase the number and quality of foster and kinship families to meet projected needs. Involve birth parents, foster parents, and kinship families as team members. Invest in the capacity of communities where large numbers of families involved in the child welfare system live.

How can we employ Family to Family Strategies in attaining those goals? Family to Family Strategies: Recruiting, Training, and Supporting Resource Families Building community Partnerships Making Decisions as a Team Evaluating Results

Where do we go from here? Put more resources into creating and supporting sibling placements Explore the concept of siblings as caregivers Support kinship care Support foster families that can provide for large family groups Be creative

For More Information: Visit UC Berkeley website: For sibling reports on UC Berkeley website: re/childwel/siblings.asp Wendy at: Erric at: