1. Leading With A Kin First Philosophy
Pennsylvania Department of Human Services
and
Westmoreland County Children’s Bureau

2. Strong Philosophy Extends Beyond Child Welfare System.
PA State Laws require kin be searched for and given first option as placement resource.
Policy provides a very broad definition of kin.
Kinship placements receive same training and pay rate as non-relative foster families.
PA is a state licensed, county operated Child Welfare System. Children in foster care are in the custody of their county children and youth agency. The state provides laws, policies, guidance, licensing and technical assistance.
PA law, established in 2003, requires that:
First consideration for placement to relatives
Relatives receive same pay rate as foster families
Foster care payment rate excluded from calculating eligibility for public assistance
Act 55 of 2013 Family Finding
Law requires county children and youth agencies to search for and identify extended relatives and kin who may be willing to support children and families entering the child welfare system.
PA Policy:
Relative of the child through blood or marriage;
God parent of the child as recognized by an organized church;
Member of the child’s tribe or clan; or
Significant positive relationship with the child or the child’s family.

3. But Laws and Polices Are Not Enough…
Training
Accurint
Permanency Services
Family Group Decision Making
Collaboration with the Courts
Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Collaborative
Laws and policies are not enough; also need to provide the necessary tools to locate and engage kin.
All caseworkers receive training on the importance of placing children with relatives/kin as part of the permanency training provided by PA Child Welfare Training Resource Center (CWRC), SWAN and AOPC
State pays for Government level access to Accurint, an online search engine, for all counties to use to locate relatives/kin.
PA offers what are often considered “adoption services”, such as child profiles, family profiles, etc. to all children in out of home care. Kinship families receive the same family profiles and support that adoptive families receive. Kinship families may also access Post-permanency services, such as Case Management, Support Groups and Respite Care.
Family Group Decision Making/Family Conferencing. Provided through grants to county agencies/also part of Concurrent Planning. Engagement of relatives/kin in planning for permanency.
The PA child welfare system has a strong partnership with the Administrative Office of PA Courts (AOPC). The AOPC works closely with both the department and CCYAs to help ensure permanent, safe, loving and stable homes for all dependent children. Through it’s Court Improvement Project, the AOPC provides training to judges and child welfare executives and oversees the round table and permanency practice initiative (PPI). The PPI also encourages the use of locating and engaging Kin through the use of FGDM to identify a permanency plan for children in out of home care.

4. Building a foundation for success
Assess your agency’s beliefs and attitudes toward kin
Examine your agency’s readiness for change
Identify the culture of your agency and community
Engage professional partners to support your efforts toward building a kin first culture
Leadership, resources, training and success stories that support a kin culture
Assess where your agency is at? Share story as my perception as the new administrator
Core beliefs/attitudes: The apple doesn’t fall from the tree or every family has relatives or friends capable to support, care and nurture their kin
Assess your agency’s readiness for change
Resistance to change or embraces change
Identify the culture of your agency and community
Child centered or family centered
Professional Partners
County wide: Judge/solicitors/CASA Director/Providers
Statewide ABA, AOPC ,Swan/Diakon, CWRT,
Leadership, Resources, training, success stories that support kin culture (combat barriers, negative beliefs/attitudes toward kin)
Leadership, whatever it takes attitude in supporting kin (certification/waivers/concrete needs)
Strength Based, Family engagement practices, tools/flow chart
Success stories of children with kin/ decrease trauma/ positive outcomes in expediting permanency/ enhanced visitation within kin home or supervised kin save caseworker time, etc.

5. Lead with a kin first philosophy
Clearly define your vision, mission and plan
Identify champions with in your agency and your community partners
Incremental changes to policy, procedure and practice that support kin
Promote leadership that embraces strength based, family engagement practices
Create high expectations and shared accountability to cultivate a Kin Culture
Share story and experience as a new administrator

6. Fostering a Kin-First Culture
Identifying the problem and the need for change
“Buy-In” from all involved parties
Invite everyone to be involved in the process of change
Training and education
Utilizing methods to improve outcomes
Identifying the Problem:
It starts when leadership identifies a problems and makes a decision to fix it
Buy In from all parties: agency and community wide
Starts at the top.
Staff fears and resistence
Bringing people onboard (understand how kin care/support benefits the child/parents/caseworker to help change negative attitudes/beliefs)
Discuss caseworker experience and how I was brought onboard.
Invite everyone to be involved in the process of change
Kinship Policy development
No one wants to be blindsided by new policies or rules. That will lead to resentment, and “just checking a box” mentality.
When people are engaged and feel as part of the process and involved in the change, they are more likely to want to continue the change and influence others to “get onboard” too. Get people invested. Those people become your agents of change.
Training and Education:
Education was highlighted during staff and management meetings.
Ongoing education of the court
Trainings specific to family finding and kinship care were completed with staff, the county bar association, judges, and guardian-ad-litem’s.
Ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands the agency’s vision
Education is key to help people bridge the gap between “just doing it because they are required to” and understanding “why they are doing it” to “wanting to do it” embracing and believing in the benefit of the practice (change in belief/attitude).
Utilizing methods to improve outcomes:
Family Finding: Accurint, Seneca
Family Group Decision Making

7. Sustaining a Kin-First Culture
Empower those that support a kin-first culture
Review, revise, and create new policy as needed
Ongoing discussion and education
Evaluating placement decisions
Ongoing data analysis of agency strengths and weaknesses
Support those that support a kin-first culture:
Invite to head committees: Implementation Team, Family Outreach Committee, FGDM
Promotions
Highlight successes
Review, revise, and create new policy as needed:
Keep transparent
Invite open participation
Developed an Implementation Team (invites all positions within the agency) to address issues as they come up and revise/create policies as needed.
Ongoing Discussion:
Always be talking about the importance of kinship placements
Highlighting the successes
Participation in the State Permanency Roundtable and Local County Roundtable
Ongoing education/discussion with the court to address issues and vision
as well as educate the community through press releases/lunch and learns/summit
Ongoing questioning:
Why isn’t the child with kin? What excuse is there?
If talking with a caseworker/supervisor about a case and the child isn’t with kin, question why not?
The court plays a key role here as they have the ability and responsibility to really question the placement decisions for a child. If the court is a strong proponent of kinship placements, caseworkers are more likely to give kinship consideration a closer look.
Keep people on their toes, let people know they are going to be questioned and even second-guessed regarding their decisions. Make them question their own reasoning as to why a kinship placement isn’t occuring. “Did I really do enough to try and find kin?” “Am I allowing any personal bias against a kin placement affect my decisions?” “What more can I do?”
Ongoing analysis:
Always be looking at your agency to see where improvements can be made.
Family Group Decision Making pilot
Kinship Conferences/ team meetings
Family Finding and Engagement
Quality Assurance Case Reviews

8. Data driven change Multi-tiered review of annual data
Analyzing new initiatives
Sharing data
Celebrating success with data
Multi-tiered review of Annual data
Administration, Fiscal, County Managers, and Program staff are included in
reviewing the data and internal case reviews
preparing the budget
Conferences and Implementation
Analyzing new initiatives – Seeking Qualitative and Quantitative data
Seek to understand, then be understood
Kinship Conferences to obtain qualitative and quantitative data about non-kin placements
Piloting early referral of FGDM conferences to increase kin and community supports
Sharing data
Data has been used to develop internal trainings targeting weaknesses (Family Engagement)
Administration embraces new data to understand systemic application of policy
Celebrating success with data
Any time data shows individuals succeeding, they are recognized throughout the hierarchical structure
Initiation of rewards when units or individuals reach certain levels of success

9. Kin First Leadership creates results
Children Placed
Represents a 252% increase in kinship care and a decrease of 48.94% in traditional foster care
Visualize that even with strong leadership, transitioning from traditional foster care to kinship care is a incremental process
Over the same time period we have been able to reduce the children in care by 2%, while investigating 30% more cases and expanding our IL services to allow children to remain in care past 18.
Fiscal Year
Westmoreland County
Hornsby-Zeller,

10. Out of Home Placement Comparison
Increase of Kinship placements over 9 years.
Currently 40.08% of placements are kin compared to 9.14% in 2007.
Kinship has become our most utilized placement resource as
traditional foster care is utilized 34.73% compared to 75.43% in 2007
Residential increase is due to status offenses
Westmoreland County
Internal Data Pull, 10/20/16

11. Correlated outcomes related to a Kin First Philosophy
The usage of Residential Care reduces over time
Westmoreland County
Project Porchlight,

12. Correlated outcomes related to a Kin First Philosophy
Placement disruptions decrease
Placement disruption – 3+ moves by the 23rd month in care
Westmoreland County
Project Porchlight,

13. Correlated outcomes related to a Kin First Philosophy
Timely Reunification increases
Timely Reunification – Cren entering foster care that are reunified within 12 months.
Westmoreland County
Project Porchlight,

14. Correlated effects of a Kin First Philosophy on permanency goals
Increase in the goal of reunification, while reducing less permanent options
Westmoreland County
Project Porchlight,

15. Questions? Pennsylvania Dept. of Human Services
Lorrie Deck, Director, Division of Programs,
Westmoreland County Children’s Bureau
Shara B. Saveikis, M.S.W. Executive Director
Jason Slonceski, Assistant Administrator
Adam Garrity, M.S.W. Program Specialist/Quality Assurance