Foster Family Focus Group
Fairfax County Department of Family Services (DFS) is one of five localities (Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun) working with the Northern Virginia Regional Kinship Care committee and A Second Chance, Inc., to increase our kinship foster families within our foster care system and to enhance our support for all kinship families within child welfare and our communities. Our region received a grant from VDSS and Fairfax County DFS is working with ASCI to reveal opportunities and challenges in addressing how to engage and work with family/kin as a best-practice response in child welfare. The five localities as well as ASCI have been meeting over the last three months to discuss County policies, procedures and structure in working with and supporting kinship families throughout the child welfare continuum.
The next phase of this project is to complete an environmental scan within each of the localities. The scan uses the foundational orientation of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, whereby ASCI engages various stakeholders to gain a true understanding of how philosophies, policies and practices respond to and advocate for kinship care. In-person conversation is the primary channel for gathering information. A conversation is conducted as a focus group, where two facilitators meet with eight to 10 identified stakeholders. The stakeholders are classified by job title and years of experience. Additional information is gained from a desk review, which is an examination of documents utilized in the continuum of care. To maintain objectivity, the scan is guided by a kinship care readiness rubric (a measurement instrument that articulates expectations using numerical values). These values are weighted and build the criteria used to express levels of competency and quality in kinship care. The rubric examines macro criteria (e.g., family value) as well as micro criteria (e.g., licensing and permanency).
Foster families participation is an important part of this environmental scan. ASCI will meet with Children, Youth and Families supervisors, specialists, managers, directors, foster families, kinship families, CASA, judges, school social workers, CSA, foster care youth and others to gather information that can be analyzed and interpreted to describe the effectiveness of kinship care throughout the continuum of our child welfare system.
Fairfax County DFS thanks you in advance for participating in this environmental scan in order to enhance our support for our kinship families throughout the child welfare continuum and within our locality.
Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019
6:30 p.m.
Fairfax County Department of Family Services
12011 Government Center Parkway, Room 507
Fairfax, VA 22035
For questions regarding the environmental scan, please contact Kamonya Omatete, program manager, Fairfax Foster Care and Adoption Program.
To RSVP for the Foster Family Focus Group, please contact Trina Roberts or call her at 703-324-7908 by Friday, Aug. 23.
Child care is not provided for this event.
This article posting is part of the Foster Family News monthly newsletter designed to keep foster parents informed about all the new and notable happenings in Fairfax County.
Learn about what the Foster Care & Adoption program has planned for foster families - stay on top of trends, participate in trainings and learn about policy changes.