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CFR's Visit Host Project is unique. When children are in foster care, our project staff identify
trusted family members, friends, or other professionals working with a family who can host visits in
place of a foster care agency caseworker. State law only requires caseworkers to arrange
family visits for children every two weeks for an hour-or the equivalent of little more than a day a year.
ACS reported in 2000 that barely 30% of children in foster care were even getting this minimum visiting with their family.
In 2004, a report by a group of children and parent advocates found that while many children were finally visiting
more often, they rarely got to see their families outside of a sterile agency office, and rarely had visits that
mimicked family life: such as those organized around sporting events, shopping trips, family dinners, holidays
and birthdays. And visits were rarely focused on helping a parent be a parent, such as visits that
include a school conference, or a doctor's appointment. These paltry practices continue because foster
care workers are overwhelmed and say they lack the time to create these opportunities for children--this,
despite child welfare research that concludes that office settings are not only unenjoyable, they are the worst
settings in which to assess whether a family is really relating in a healthy way--
The Ira W. DeCamp Foundation and Child Welfare Fund provided critical cornerstone support of the
Visit Host Project: in the pilot, a CFR social worker helps foster care agencies find aunts and
uncles, pastors and guidance counselors, even coaches to become Visit Hosts. Visits take
place in family-friendly settings, under conditions where parents get the assistance and parenting
guidance they may need. The Visit Host ensures a child's safety while allowing children
and parents to experience life's moments - together - like homework, a movie, a haircut, or bowling
on a Friday night. At the same time, CFR convened a citywide workgroup to draft guidelines
for recruiting visit hosts that could be used by any agency, anywhere. Those guidelines
were presented to ACS in September of 2005.
Since 2004, CFR has worked with four different foster care agencies, assessed dozens of families
and provided technical assistance on this important innovation for children in foster care:
- Parents and children thrive so well under these more natural and supportive circumstances that
the family quickly proceeds to visits where no more supervision is necessary;
- When a child can visit with a parent and a host, the agency caseworker is free'd up to do
other important service planning for the family;
- The Visit Host citywide workgroup had conducted focus groups for young people in care,
parents, foster parents and agency workers to improve our technical assistance on visit hosts;
- The Visit Host Project is getting such positive citywide feedback that CFR staff were
asked to do training on the model statewide by the Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children;
and in March of 2006, Casey Family Services asked CFR to train on visit hosts in Washington State to a
consortium of its foster care agencies.
- CFR's Visit Host work is featured in Child Welfare Watch: The Innovation Issue: New Initiatives
in Child Welfare, Vol. 11, Summer 2005.
- Partner foster care agencies include: the New York Foundling Hospital, Edwin Gould Services,
SCO Family Services, Good Shepherd Services, and the Children's Aid Society.
To support our Visit Host Project, click here.
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