Are We Still Counting Permanencies and Does It Really Matter?

Purpose: In response to the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 and a rapidly rising child welfare population, the state of Illinois initiated policies to move children out of state care and into permanent homes. These policies helped to create a service environment that moved thousands of children out of the child welfare system. Although generally positive, the fewer number of children in care is creating new challenges for the private child welfare agencies and their staff that care for foster children. Agencies can no longer depend on the same level of government support as when the system was “in crisis,” which is forcing them to change the way they do business and, thus, influencing how their front-line staff make service decisions and implement the policies that were created for a much different environment. This paper examines the changing influence of Illinois' policies on the permanency service decisions of frontline staff. It provides information about the complex relationship between organizational structure and frontline service decision-making. Consequently, understanding this relationship is essential to understanding how policy influences the services children receive while in care.

Method: This project uses interpretive policy analysis as the methodological framework for conducting this study. It seeks to understand policy from the street level, where individuals with their own values, beliefs, and experiences are responsible for interpreting and implementing policy. The investigator conducts 20 in-depth interviews of direct service providers from two private child welfare agencies in Cook County, Illinois. The researcher uses frame analysis to identify patterns in the way child welfare direct service staff put forward particular views about placement and permanency policies and decisions. Utilization of this analysis tool assists the researcher with identifying the otherwise implicit assumptions child welfare direct service staff promote when interpreting policies.

Results: Although the message remains clear that children should move out of care and into permanent homes as soon as appropriately possible, concerns about lost funding and jobs may influence how frontline staff make permanency decisions thus lengthening the time children spend in care. Interviews suggest that staff are feeling pressure to strategically slow child permanencies so as to maximize the financial benefit their agency can gain from keeping a child in care. To what extent this pressure is real or perceived and whether case managers are willing or able to slow permanencies is mixed.

Conclusions and Implications: This analysis does not seek to understand the impact of policies, as others have, based on costs, benefits, and choice. Rather, this study provides understanding into the complex role direct service providers play in providing the services that determine children's outcomes. Moreover, it offers a unique examination of the role policy plays in the provision of social services where strangers regularly make critical service decisions that can change the life course of the children and families they serve. make critical service decisions that can change the life course of the children and families they serve.