Customer Service for Retention

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In child welfare work, responsive, helpful, respectful service to all of our key partners — including current and prospective families — should be a part of our work every day and every month.

— National Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment

Contents

Engaging foster parents as partners is the key factor in both recruiting and retaining foster/adoptive families. Partnership is built on the attitude that each participant in the child welfare system—from line staff; to the agency director; to the judge; to the foster, adoptive, or kinship family—must feel like a valued member of the team and be committed to providing good customer service.

First Interactions

First impressions are critical in determining one's perceptions about a product or service. In child welfare interactions, how people are treated at the first point of contact sets the tone for how the relationship will move forward (Geen, 2004). When your agency responds to inquiries, is the first interaction a welcoming one, or does the caller feel interrogated, unimportant, or ignored? Is the agency employee that answers and returns the calls smiling on their end of the phone? Research has shown that a smile can be felt through the phone and improves customer satisfaction. It is standard advice in sales and customer service to smile while talking on the phone (Customers That Stick, n.d.).

It is also standard advice to use the words "thank you." Saying "thank you" both engages customers and makes them receptive to the rest of the conversation. Are prospective foster/adoptive parents thanked for their interest? A simple "thank you" in the first conversation tells them that their interest is both wanted and taken seriously.

How timely is a response to a prospective foster/adoptive parent? Best practice suggests that a timely response is within 24 hours. The NRCDR recommends, "Return all phone calls to prospective and current foster and adoptive parents and kinship caregivers within 24 hours. Even if you are waiting for more information and can't answer the caller's questions, call them back to let them know that you're working on their questions."

(See Appendix 7-1: Five Things You Can Do to Improve Customer Service—Phone Interaction with Families.)

An attitude of respect

All future steps in the process should also be timely and respectful. Retention starts with recruitment, so every piece of the process sets the tone for how the prospective foster/adoptive parent and the agency will engage with one another.

For example, prospective foster/adoptive parents are invited to attend an orientation or information session. Are there current foster parents at the session to answer questions and give advice? While it is not normally considered to be "customer service," providing opportunities for prospective foster parents to interact with current foster parents sends a strong message that the agency values its foster/adoptive families.

(See: Appendix 7-2: 10 Things You Can Do to Improve Customer Service—Prospective Parent Orientation Sessions.)

Streamlining paperwork is another way to respectfully engage prospective foster/adoptive parents. Review your current documentation to identify duplicative paperwork, unnecessary paperwork or hard-to-understand paperwork. Thoughtfulness and consideration in the application process help prospective foster/adoptive parents to fully embrace the process. Some agencies schedule paperwork days, when prospective foster families come to the agency for help in completing documentation. Technical assistance should be offered to all foster parents to help them complete their documents in a timely fashion.

An optional documentation tool, the "Foster Parent Paperwork Checklist" has garnered some positive feedback from homefinders and applicants. This tool allows all parties to know what document is required and when the document should be completed.

A key component of Roots and Wings in Santa Cruz County, California, is the contract position of Outreach and Recruitment Coordinator. The coordinator supports and guides applicants through the certification process by helping them to access, complete, and submit applications and other required paperwork. Prospective foster families have one consistent person to help them navigate each step to certification. The county also created the role of Resource Family Liaison to augment the work of casework staff within its service delivery system. The liaisons are paraprofessionals hired by and paid by a community-based organization to provide intensive support to foster parents and relative caregivers. It included activities such as maintaining contact through home visits, making referrals to support groups and mentors, identifying training needs, and either providing or referring families for training (County of Santa Cruz Human Services Department, n.d.).

Ongoing support for foster/adoptive families

24/7 response

Timely and responsive communications between agencies and foster/adoptive families is critical in keeping and sustaining foster parents. This is never more important than when a situation arises in the middle of the night, and the foster parent needs the agency for support. It is essential that the agency be available 24/7 for its foster/adoptive families.

It is recommended that agencies develop a crisis response protocol and that everyone is aware of how it applies to them and their role and responsibility. Agencies may develop their own 24/7 phone trees of internal contacts or assign this role to a subcontractor. An emergency number can be staffed by agency employees during the day and by a contracted answering service after normal business hours.

Involvement in the process

Foster/adoptive families are members of the treatment team and should have an opportunity to provide input along with other team members throughout the time of the child's placement. Foster/adoptive families have tremendous responsibility in their role within the foster care system. Having a voice in decision making can lead to successful and positive outcomes for the child in their temporary care.

Peer support and mentoring

Organized support can be used to both engage and retain prospective foster parents while they await the availability of a MAPP class. Peer support is a key factor throughout the entire certification process, which can take up to six months. The negative effects of this lengthy process can be mitigated by facilitating and supporting connections between a prospective foster parent and current foster/adoptive families. These types of initiatives support both recruitment and retention, because the agency is showing prospective foster parents that it values them enough to connect them to the "pulse" of foster parenting. Current foster parents are given the message that their contributions are valued.

Developing a culture of support also enables new foster/adoptive families to adjust to their roles. Mentoring programs match a "seasoned" foster/adoptive family with new foster parents. The current foster/adoptive family can provide valuable insights and share successful techniques they have used in dealing with difficult situations. A viable mentoring program may decrease the need for agencies to respond to crisis situations in new foster families.

In a survey conducted by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), foster/adoptive families indicated that peer support groups were very helpful to them. They provide opportunities to network and be engaged with others experiencing similar challenges. Peer support groups can help foster parents feel less alone in dealing with a problem, provide helpful information from others who have had similar experiences, discuss ideas for dealing with a problem, allow foster parents to express their feelings, and bring about change. Agencies may assist foster/adoptive families to establish support groups by providing meeting space at convenient hours for foster/adoptive families and providing contact information. Agencies can also proactively encourage new foster/adoptive families to join existing associations and support groups.

Nonprofit, community-based programs can play a role in supporting foster children and foster/adoptive families.

Respite care

Respite care provides planned, temporary, periodic relief to foster parents from foster care responsibilities. No single model program or blueprint is preferred—each agency provides this service in a way that best meets the needs of its foster/adoptive families. In general, however, respite care programs meet a specific need, promote teamwork and trust, use trained respite providers, and are flexible to meet changing needs (Office of Inspector General, 1994).

Respite care is especially beneficial for foster parents who are caring for children with special needs. Research indicates that, after receiving respite care, caregivers reported reduced stress levels, improved family relationships, and a more positive attitude about fostering (Owens-Kane, 2006).

Providing effective respite care involves assessing and understanding the needs of foster/kinship families in the community. Families' needs vary widely. Some families prefer only in-home respite care, while others do not like people coming to stay in their home. Some families like sending children to camp, while others feel uncomfortable sending their children away. It is also important to understand the barriers families may encounter in accessing respite. Are respite services provided by someone they know and trust, conveniently located, and available at needed times of the day or week? Can families trust that the providers are trained and capable of caring for the special needs of their child? Providing high-quality respite care requires taking the pulse of the community of foster and kinship families to understand their true needs (AdoptUSKids, 2013).

Other respite options include:

• Camps for the children to attend
• Recurring or regularly scheduled respite, e.g. the last weekend of each month
• Drop off events, e.g., free two-hour, supervised programs at the local YWCA, utilizing staff who already meet required background clearances (AdoptUSKids, 2012)

Fresh ways of approaching respite care are emerging. For example, some counties/agencies utilize newly certified foster parents as short-term providers of respite care prior to their first placement. This approach gives a new foster parent a glimpse of caring for a foster child in their home and also gives the county/agency an opportunity to see how the family integrates a foster child into their day-to-day life. The experience of providing respite to another foster family may encourage new foster parents to broaden the range of characteristics of children for whom they are willing to provide care.

Agencies also may be able to increase the number of respite foster homes by analyzing their unused and underutilized certified homes. This exercise may lead to a subset of providers that are able to solely provide respite services.

Training

Providing training opportunities for foster parents confirms their value in the child welfare system. Training that helps caregivers deal with the realities of foster parenting, especially equipping them to manage the behavior of children they are caring for, is highly sought after in many jurisdictions, both during the pre-certification period and as an ongoing support. Today's foster parents are juggling multiple responsibilities and have hectic schedules. Agencies need to bring relevant training to the foster parents by making it accessible through a variety of formats: in-person education, online courses, live webinars and other distance learning modalities.

Pre-certification training

Prospective foster/adoptive families are required to complete training before certification or approval. In New York State, local districts frequently use GPSII/MAPP or Deciding Together for prospective foster parents and Deciding Together or Caring for Our Own for kinship families. The success of the pre-certification training experience depends on training being provided fairly soon after orientation, at a time and location convenient for prospective foster parents, and in a training environment conducive to engagement and openness. Each participant should have an opportunity to complete an evaluation after each training session and at the end of the entire training.

In-service education

While the education of foster parents starts with MAPP and may include recertification trainings, it does not have to end there. In the business world, when a company offers professional development opportunities to its employees, it is demonstrating their importance to the organization by investing in them. Providing similar opportunities to prospective and current foster parents shows them that the agency recognizes their importance to the work of the organization and wants to invest time and money in their growth. Training in topics such as communication, parenting, and stress management, as well as attendance at conferences and other large-scale educational events, can be useful to foster parents. It can also be an opportunity for foster parents to develop as trainers. For example, if they attend a conference, they can be asked to share what they learned in a staff or support group meeting. It is another reminder that they are part of a larger team and their contributions are critical to overall success.

Most agencies are able to use local community experts for in-service training. For example, agency staff may conduct a training on permanency; Child Protective Services supervisors may do an overview of reporting procedures, the investigation process, rights of the subject and child, and standards of proof; a Family Court Judge may summarize the Family Court process; the fire department could provide home safety training; or the local police department could conduct a session on home safety or avoiding cyber crimes.

Distance learning

In addition to traditional classroom training, other training modalities such as webinars and live-streaming learning sessions are becoming more available. In New York State, free online training is delivered to the home computers of foster and adoptive parents by iLinc, a service created by the Center for Development of Human Services (CDHS) at Buffalo State College in partnership with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. Other online educational programs are available, but it is suggested that trainings not conducted by CDHS or OCFS should be previewed by the agency before recommending them to foster parents.

Cross-training

Cross-training between agency staff and foster/adoptive families is also becoming more common. For example, some states conduct joint training for foster/adoptive families and the child welfare staff. This approach enhances communication opportunities, helps both groups to have the same knowledge base, and encourages mutual respect. In New York State, the mini-MAPP curriculum can be accessed by child welfare staff through CDHS, and offers a condensed curriculum that introduces child welfare staff to the philosophy, concepts, activities, terminology, and tools provided to foster parents during the full MAPP training.

Higher levels of support

Families caring for children with special needs often require higher levels of support. While training and support groups are important, other systems should be in place to adequately engage families around challenging situations that may disrupt a foster home.

Trauma-informed care

As the needs of children in foster care become more complex, supports for foster/adoptive families must expand. For example, foster parents need additional resources when caring for children and youth who have been affected by trauma. Trauma-informed care is part of MAPP training for foster parents, and is an approach for managing behavioral issues and other needs stemming from trauma. In some cases, additional support and resources may be needed beyond MAPP training.

Complex trauma involves the repeated or long-term exposure to traumatic events. It is widely accepted that the majority of youth placed in care have been in some way traumatized by direct abuse, witnessing the abuse of other family members, long-term neglect, and/or being removed from family and community due to placement in foster care. Foster parents should be well-equipped to recognize behaviors resulting from trauma, to make the connection between the behaviors and trauma, and to adequately address the behaviors without further traumatizing the children in care by having them removed from the foster home.

There is no expectation that foster/adoptive parents should become trauma experts, but they should be trauma-informed. According to the Trauma Informed Care Project, "becoming 'trauma-informed' means recognizing that people often have many different types of trauma in their lives. People who have been traumatized need support and understanding from those around them. Trauma survivors can be re-traumatized by well-meaning caregivers and community service providers. Understanding the impact of trauma is an important first step in becoming a compassionate and supportive community." (Trauma Informed Care Project, n.d.)

Youth need to be engaged and educated about the trauma in their lives and about how it may affect their behavior. At the same time, the foster/adoptive parents need the training and skills to recognize the connections between current behaviors and past events in children's lives. This requires varied types of agency and community support. When a child's behavior is indicative of trauma, agencies should provide timely, strategic, and appropriately balanced support to keep foster/adoptive families intact, encourage relationship building, and limit further victimization of the youth in care.

Multidimensional treatment foster care

Multidimensional treatment is designed to be an alternative to group or residential treatment, incarceration, or hospitalization for adolescents who have problems with chronic antisocial behavior, emotional disturbance, and delinquency. Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO), formerly Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, is a widely used model of support for troubled youth, their birth parents, and foster parents. Foster parents are an integral part of the treatment team, which also includes program supervisors, the birth family, individual therapists, and behavioral skill trainers. With the support of the team, the foster/adoptive family implements a structured, individualized program for the youth in care. TFCO program supervisors are available to foster/adoptive families around the clock for consultation, support and supervision.

See the practice model, TFCO.

Put It Into Practice

Keeping Foster and Kin Parents Trained and Supported (KEEP)

KEEP was developed by the Oregon Social Learning Center and has been effective in increasing foster parent retention and preventing placement breakdowns. It functions as both a training and a support group for foster and kinship families with children in care between the ages of 4 and 12. KEEP groups typically include seven to ten foster parents who attend 16 weekly 90-minute sessions that focus on practical, research-based parenting techniques. While the facilitators draw from an established protocol manual, they tailor each session to the specific needs, circumstances, and priorities of participating parents and their children. Each week, the facilitators gather specific information about the children's current behaviors by telephone. This information is then incorporated into the weekly sessions to make sure the group is both current and relevant.

See the practice model, KEEP.

Additional resources

Customer service

• Support Matters: Lessons from the Field on Services for Adoptive, Foster, and Kinship Care Families: This AdoptUSKids publication highlights successful family support services, provides data about the value of support services, offers tools and guidance for assessing the needs of adoptive, foster, and kinship care families, and discusses research findings about implementing support services, including forming public/private partnerships, accessing funding, and conducting program and service assessment and evaluation.
• Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families.: The State of North Carolina's findings and practices for the recruitment and retention of resource families.
• Building Successful Resource Families: A Guide for Public Agencies: A comprehensive practice guide of recruitment and retention strategies published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
• A Movement to Transform Foster Parenting: A report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that explores ways for public agencies to ensure that children receive the care they need by enlisting more volunteers to step forward as foster parents and by encouraging the extraordinary individuals who have already answered the call to continue their commitment to care.

Support groups

• Diligent Recruitment of Families for Children in the Foster Care System: Slide presentation on supporting foster children to develop strong "roots" in their families, communities, and cultures; and providing them opportunities or "wings" to thrive (County of Santa Cruz, CA).
• Parent Support Groups: Summarizes proven activities and resources for parent group projects/programs (Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York).

Trauma-informed care

• Helping Young People in Foster Care Heal from Trauma and Build Resilience: Blog posted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation with links to information from the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative and other resources.
• Trauma-Informed Practice with Young People in Foster Care: An issue brief summarizing the prevalence of trauma in foster care youth, its effects and symptoms, and the provision of trauma-informed care (Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative).

Practice Models

• Mockingbird Family Model
• KEEP
• Treatment Foster Care Oregon
• Seneca Center Wraparound Services

Appendices

• Appendix 7-1: Phone Interaction With Families
• Appendix 7-2: Prospective Parent Orientation Sessions
• Appendix 7-3: Foster Parent Paperwork Checklist
• Appendix 7-4: Generic Template for Volunteers
• Appendix 7-5: Six Reasons to Offer Support Services to Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Families
• Appendix 7-6: Fostering Futures NY
• Appendix 7-7: Every Month Is Customer Service Month

References

• Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition. (n.d.). Helping Foster Parents Grieve. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from affcny.org
• AdoptUSKids. (2012). Creating and Sustaining Effective Respite Services. Linthicum, MD: AdoptUSKids.
• AdoptUSKids. (2013). Taking a Break: Creating Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Respite Care in Your Community. Linthicum, MD: AdoptUSKids
• Geen, R., Malm, K., Katz, J. (2004). A Study to Inform the Recruitment and Retention of General Applicant Adoptive Parents, Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 7(4).
• Goodman, D. & Steinfield, F. (2012). Building Successful Resource Families Practice Guide. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation.
• County of Santa Cruz Human Services Department. (n.d.). Supportive Services. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from santacruzhumanservices.org
• Customers That Stick. (n.d.). Smiling on the Phone: Does It Really Work? Retrieved May 29, 2018, from customersthatstick.com/
• Office of Inspector General. (1994). Respite Care Services for Foster Parents — Six Case Studies. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• Owens-Kane, S. (2006). Respite care: Outcomes for kinship and non-kinship caregivers. Journal of Health & Social Policy, 22(3/4), 85-99.
• Trauma Informed Care Project. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2018, from www.traumainformedcareproject.org
• Foster & Kinship Parent Recruitment and Support Best Practice Inventory, Redlich Horowitz, 2017). saved on SharePoint as "Final Best Practices Inventory Caregivers" www.rhfdn.org