Partnership Projects Enhance Central Illinois Foster Care System

Faculty members from Illinois State University's School of Social Work/Center for Adoption Studies have partnered with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to improve outcomes and enhance foster care services in Central Illinois.  The purpose of the grant-funded partnership and related student service learning projects is to reduce the number of Central Illinois children who enter and remain in long-term foster care without the benefit of family stability.

Under the Permanency Enhancement Project partnership, faculty members Doris M. Houston, Jeanne Howard, and Kathryn Wehrmann provide training, technical assistance, and outcome evaluation services to community-based social service agencies in a 50 county region in Central Illinois. 

The primary goal of the project is to increase community involvement and collaboration between social service agencies, juvenile courts, and community stakeholders for the purpose of moving foster children into permanent homes more quickly. The project also encourages communities to become more involved in supporting troubled families through local initiatives and public-private partnerships.

Service learning projects conducted by graduate students in the School of Social Work have also helped to enhance the project by targeting social work strategies specifically for families of color, who tend to be overrepresented in the Illinois child welfare system.  During the spring 2009 semester, students in Professor Doris Houston's Cultural Competence class worked with child welfare agencies in Bloomington, Peoria, Decatur, Champaign, Springfield and Charleston.  Student projects included grant writing assistance to fund a new parent mentor program in Bloomington-Normal, the development of public relations materials for the Permanency Enhancement Project and the compilation of two faith-based resource guides to help families locate church-based resources and support.

Representatives from Central Illinois community organizations involved in the Permanency Enhancement Project partnership will meet in Bloomington at Illinois State University's Alumni Center on June 16 for training and program review sessions.  The organizations are grouped into community action teams consisting of schools, churches, courts, mental health organizations and child welfare and social service agencies.  Additional information about the project can be accessed at the Center for Adoption Studies' web site: http://www.adoptionresearch.ilstu.edu/PEP/IDCFS_PEP.shtml