September 16 marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, a time when Hispanics look to connect with their ancestors. This yearning may start with the need to locate a parent or other adult relatives who are still living. Foster care has an important place during this month because of the roughly 92,000 Hispanic children in the system. Just as with others kids in foster care, Hispanic children long to be back with their relatives.
Unfortunately, reunification is often complicated because many of these youths’ family members still live in Latin America. However, hundreds of foster children are now either reunited or in contact with their families because of the Hispanic-owned and operated charity, Forever Homes for Foster Kids.
When a child enters foster care, federal and state laws require agencies to perform “family finding,” a process wherein a child’s adult relatives are identified, located, and notified about the child. Social services looks for family members willing to become a guardian and give the child a permanent home or at least to be a part of the child’s life.
Although foster care agencies have about an 85% success rate finding relatives for non-Hispanic children, their level of success in locating a Hispanic foster child’s relatives who live somewhere in Latin America can range from good to poor. These lower success rates for international family finding are primarily due to a lack of training and resources.
Family finding has been around since the early 1990s, when it was conceptualized and developed in Washington State as a new process to reunify foster children with their families. Yet nearly three decades later, some agencies across the country have not yet embraced this process despite many studies about family finding benefits. Former Texas family court judge Brent Chesney stated, "Statistics show clearly that if you put someone in foster care, they stay there longer and the case stays open longer than if you put them with a family member or a friend."
Research by the Los Angeles based organization, Community Coalition, founded by Congress member Karen Bass, found that "children placed with relatives have better outcomes, including fewer behavioral problems, higher high school graduation rates, and less chance of unemployment and homelessness."
Teresa M. Burleson, Foster Care Social Worker with the McDowell County Department of Social Services, probably said it best:
"It is painful to think that some child currently in U.S. foster care could be with blood relatives – perhaps not a perfect solution but at least one that has a chance at being humane – or, if we knew for certain that their family could not be found, we would be able to attempt a permanent placement."
Family finding as a process is still not part of the mainstream curriculum to earn a Masters of Social Work at some universities. One administration official commented that students take courses on interacting with children and families, but family finding was not directly mentioned nor was there a description alluding to this process.
Education in family finding for staff often falls on the shoulders of each foster care office. With no national standards of practice, many agencies have had to design their own family finding training.
Additionally, family finding in other countries requires specialized training. Concerning the application of this process in Mexico, Kevin Campbell, the architect of family finding, wrote:
“Connecting individuals to their families is vital to improving safety, well-being, and permanency outcomes for our most vulnerable youth. Conducting a hopeful search for an individual in Mexico requires additional knowledge and information differing from the United States.”
I am one of the world’s leading authorities on performing family finding throughout Latin America. Success requires skill sets and resources that the majority of agencies and their staff simply lack.
The desire to do what’s best for foster children is the driving force and passion for most foster care officials. Yet for there to be passion and commitment, one has to have enough faith in a process to get behind it, support it, and ensure that every effort is taken to have success. The success in this case is the locating of a Hispanic foster child’s relatives who are still living in Latin America.
Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has often used a denigrating tone towards its southern neighbors. Its dehumanizing rhetoric about the people in Latin America and their “corrupt” governments makes it understandable that some, if not many, in social services view performing family finding in Latin American countries to be futile -- a waste of precious money and time.
For some agencies, they are absolutely correct. If staff lacks the training to conduct family finding internationally, and agencies are not placing enough importance on the benefits of family finding especially for Hispanic foster children, then those agencies will lose time and money and should avoid doing family finding. However, without family finding, thousands of Hispanic foster children will have no chance to connect to their families for years.
This absence of training and resources is exactly the reason that I created Forever Homes for Foster Kids. This charity is veteran- and Hispanic-owned, and specializes in family finding in Latin America. For 25 years, Forever Homes has taken on cases from government agencies and other organizations across the country. The following examples will give you hope of how family finding, properly executed with the right resources and expertise, can make positive life-changes for Hispanic foster children:
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Children is a national organization that recruits, trains and supports citizen-volunteers to advocate for the best interests of abused and neglected children in courtrooms and communities. These children are often foster youths. CASA of Travis County, Texas brought a case to Forever Homes for Foster Kids involving two siblings in foster care.
By the time we got this case, the older sister had already aged out of foster care and was on her own. Child Protective Services, CPS, has not been successful at finding relatives of these children. The fear was that in several years the brother would also be forced out of foster care, and both would spend the rest of their lives with no family other than each other to help them. CASA had some information on relatives possibly living in Mexico and hoped that our charity could find them. Anjuli Barak, CASA Family Finding Specialist wrote,
"The child... has had no contact with family members for a number of years and has suffered greatly because of it."
Finding at least one adult family member would change the lives of these two siblings forever.
Within a few weeks, Forever Homes for Foster Kids had succeeded in providing contact information that enabled CASA to call and talk with the children's birth father as well as with several other adult relatives. CASA also learned that these foster children had two aunts living in Illinois and had passed that information to Child Protective Services. About our success in finding these family members, Ms. Barak wrote:
"We feel confident that we will be able to reconnect these siblings with their relatives and instill hope in a hopeless situation."
In another example, Family Finding, a branch in Chester County, PA that is part of the larger agency Turning Points for Children, the leading social service agency in Philadelphia, needed help to locate a foster child’s family in Honduras. Patrice Tallarita, Family Finding Case Manager, explains the reason her organization reached out to Forever Homes for Foster Kids.
“We work collaboratively with Chester County Division of Children, Youth & Families to connect youth who are in out-ofhome care to family, and create permanency plans for these youth. We make it our mission to create a Lifetime Network of support for youth who remain permanently in the lives of the youth.
Unfortunately, we occasionally have a case that gets "stuck", for lack of a better word. This happens when we use all of the resources that we have, but are still unable to locate positive supports for a youth. With this particular case Forever Homes for Foster Kids was handling, the youth knew she had family in Honduras, but had lost all contact with that family. I met with the youth and did a family tree exercise, and gave your organization all of the information I found about the family members in Honduras.
Within weeks, we received the mailing addresses and phone numbers of multiple paternal relatives of the youth with whom she had lost contact. Forever Homes for Foster Kids was able to open doors for a youth who was without many options.”
During Hispanic Heritage Month, take time to consider the tens of thousands of children who are in U.S. foster care. If you have children or young nieces and nephews, be grateful they will spend this month knowing who their family is and being among people who love them. Their present is stable and safe while their future is open and full of opportunities.
Then do one more thing: think about the 92,000 Hispanic foster children who have no control over their lives. They’re separated from their parents and families, and probably traumatized by their surroundings. Instead of spending time living and loving in a stable family setting, these children are alone and possibly at risk. No child deserves that.
Happily, family finding is a time-tested process that reunites foster children with their families whether those relatives live in the U.S. or far away in a city in Argentina. It is definitely time for agencies and the public to fully support the family finding process because it is one of the key ways to give foster children the forever family they so desperately want and deserve.
Richard Villasana, founder of Forever Homes for Foster Kids, is a leading international authority on immigration issues and foster families. A proud Navy veteran, Richard has been featured on CNN International, AP News, ABC TV, Univision, Costco Connections, Washington Post, and EFE, the world’s largest Spanish language media company. He is an international speaker and has also translated for the United Nations. For 25 years, his non-profit has worked with government agencies across the country to find families for immigrant and foster children to create a permanent home. Go to www.facebook.com/familyfindingmx for more information and to help a child
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski