Town Hall Recap & Next Steps for Path to Permanency

In early September, Path to Permanency hosted our first Foster and Kinship Parent Town Hall.  The 29 Mecklenburg County caregivers who attended and gave valuable feedback, made the event a great success! It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with one another and engage in important conversations with Christy Roessler from Foster Family Alliance (FFA) and Jessica Fresina from NCDHHS.

Key Discussion Topics

Our learning focused on several key areas of the NC Child Welfare Manual, including:

Monthly Permanency Planning Contact Record (DSS 5295)We discussed the purpose of this form that is completed by the child’s social worker during monthly home visits and shared feedback on how receiving a copy of this record would be helpful for communication and establishing a positive record of placement, in the event of a social worker threatening to remove a child. A state DSS representative confirmed that this was best practice to provide to placement providers following each monthly home visit; however, no kinship/foster parent present had ever received a copy.

Child Family Team (CFT) & Permanency Planning Review (PPR) Meetings

We explored the requirement that PPR’s are to be held within the first 60 days of a case and every 90 days thereafter, must include the placement provider (among others), document signatures of attendees and distribute post-meeting notes to attendees. Caregivers insisted that PPR’s are not happening regularly in their cases and very few of those present had ever been included in a PPR. 

Concurrent Planning & Safety Concerns

We talked about advocating for timely permanency and addressing safety concerns. We shared experiences on how concurrent planning has worked in cases where reunification is no longer the primary goal and how safety issues have been handled poorly. FFA and DHHS clarified that reunification is a possibility up until the TPR has been signed, so the ambiguity that many caregivers reported experiencing is understandable, although not ideal.

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Moving Forward 

Based on the topics discussed, the group voted that the most impactful tool for shortening paths to permanency for Mecklenburg County foster children would be for YFS to hold PPR’s in accordance with the state manual’s requirements. The results of this vote, along with the feedback from all small group discussions, have been shared with DHHS and FFA to help develop an action plan. P2P has a meeting scheduled for October 6 with YFS leadership and county commissioners to address the topic of CFTs.

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Available Resources 

During the Town Hall, we shared a number of digital resources that are now available on our website. These include:

• Monthly Permanency Planning Contact Record

• PPR Form

• DSS State Permanency Planning Manual

• Case Timeline Tracker

• Guide on How to Handle YFS Concerns