Best Practice Standards.

Adoptive Family Wraparound will support and maintain California's best practice standards in Wraparound. Each of following elements has been assumed in the philosophy and design of AFTER services.

 (1)   Families as full partners:

Despite the fact that Adoption Wraparound is paid for by Federal, State and County funds the adoptive family, and not the county, is the purchaser of service. Therefore, the family must have access, voice and ownership at all levels of service planning. The services are not mandatory and the family can discontinue their Wraparound Plan at any time. There will be some situations where actual or potential Court involvement may play a role in such a decision but, regardless, families will have a high level of decision-making power in all aspects of planning, delivery and evaluation of services and supports. Specifically, Facilitator and Family Specialist staff will ensure the following elements are true from the very first conversation and throughout the wraparound experience:

    a)    That the issues are identified from the family and child’s perspective.

(b)   That the family’s concern about any system issues are identified and discussed.

(c)    That all formal and informal resources that have been used, or might be used, in times of crisis are identified.

(d)   That any professionals who the family or child remembers as having been helpful are identified.

(e)    That the strengths of the family and all its members have been identified through a process that has been non-judgmental, non-blaming, adoption-competent and family-centered.

(f)     That the family and child have been able to tell their story in their own way and from their individual perspectives.

(g)    That an opportunity has been provided to identify the history and role of birth family, including the family and child’s feelings about their involvement or lack of involvement in the adoption process, and their actual or psychological role in current family life.

(h)    That previously successful strategies or techniques are identified, even if they are seen to no longer be helpful.

(i)      That family and child preferences, wants and expressed needs are clearly relayed from the beginning of the process, and are refined and updated over time.

Family access, voice and ownership as reflected above will be reviewed with the family as part of the initial and ongoing Child and Family Team meetings. These meetings will be scheduled at times and in locations convenient for the participation of family members. The family is encouraged to include as many of their extended family and other community resource persons as they feel would be helpful to their process.

Team decisions as to type and level of service, selection of service provider, duration and intensity of service, and evaluation of usefulness will be highly dependent upon the wishes of the family.  

(2)   Strengths defined from first conversation:

The Adoptive Family Wraparound Team bases its service planning on strength-based principles, in the knowledge that it is the family's strengths that enable adoptions of children to survive, and then to thrive. The Facilitator is responsible for identifying the family’s strengths, conducting a comprehensive life domain needs analysis, and for designing and updating a measurable, individualized Child and Family Service Plan. The needs analysis will address each of the following life domain areas: residence, family, social, emotional/psychological, relational/attachment, educational/vocational, safety, legal, medical, spiritual, cultural, behavioral and financial. 

Children are usually Identified Patients before their placement in the adoptive home, during the phases of family formation, and frequently at the point of request for adoption assistance. The initial Strengths Conversation is assisted by an experienced adoptive family staff member (Parent Partner) helps to ensure that the anticipated pathologically based response from community providers is eliminated.

 (3)   Unique child & family teams:

AFTER's understanding of adoption dynamics requires that all service provision, in order to be respectful as well as effective, must be within the context of the lifelong process, the core issues, and the understanding of the normative adoptive family life cycle. This set of dynamics demands that no single activity can exist in isolation. Therefore coordination of services by AFTER Family Specialists is critical to reaching the family's goals.

Adoptive family members are integral team members and no adjustment to the Adoption Wraparound Plan may be made without their full involvement and concurrence in the process. Each adoptive family has it's own Wraparound Team, coordinated by a Facilitator or another team member, and including all willing family members, the Family Specialist and the Parent Partner, as well as school staff and other community members and professionals as requested by the family or the facilitator. 

(4)     Culturally competent services:

AFTER staff are experienced in working with families and children from a wide range of cultures and affiliations. Because the family is the consumer of service the team must function according to the family's position within its culture. By including significant community members, and other adoptive parents from that community in the team, the risk of team members acknowledging and respecting cultural values, norms, expectations and preferences is substantially reduced. AFTER can provide Spanish-speaking staff as needed. 

(5)   Blending of formal & informal resources:

AFTER is committed to an unconditional approach to community-based support of adoptive families caring for physically and emotionally abused children, and those with lifelong and pervasive seqeuli of loss. Formal services alone are insufficient to provide for support of families created by adoption over a lifetime. The development of informal resources for this hitherto un-served population is a required element of all AFTER services. In particular, the following informal naturally occurring resources will be considered at the initial and each subsequent Wraparound Team meeting and utilized whenever available and acceptable to the family. In the terminology of adoption these are referred to as the child or family’s “kinship network”.

• School personnel, including teachers, aides, coaches, bus drivers and janitors.

• Extended adoptive family members, including grandparents, uncles/aunts and cousins.

• Birth family members, including extended family.

• Church affiliated resources, including ministers and church members.

• Neighbors with significant relationship to the child or family.

• Former foster parents of the child.

• Former social workers for the child and/or birth family.

• Current social worker reassessing AAP.

• Former adoption worker for the family.

• Former foster brothers and sisters.

• Former birth siblings no matter where now living.

• The family’s attorney, if a set-aside is being contemplated.

• Any other individuals whom the family views as having a relationship that may be helpful to their process.

      One of the most difficult aspects of deteriorating relationships within an adoptive family is the withdrawal of support from these types of resources. Adoptive parents typically feel isolated from their traditional supports, who no longer feel able to offer them encouragement, ideas or even some respite. On the contrary, they are likely to be the very people advising the family to place the child in institutional care and to dissolve the adoption. Adoption Wraparound must provide ways of strengthening the informal resources upon which the family wants to rely, in favor of the preservation of the child in the home. Wraparound will therefore provide training to informal resources and extended family members, will develop a system of educated informal respite providers, and will establish ongoing community support groups for both families and those who support them.

(6)   Flexibility in Services:

     AFTER activities will be provided at locations and times that are flexible and determined by individual circumstance. The AFTER library resources will based at a conveniently located office site, with services provided at several locations throughout the County. The award-winning AFTER resource-laden web site is available on the Internet at www.AfterAdoption.org. Strength Conversations will take place in the family home, and at any location in the community convenient to family members.

     Services and meetings will be provided at times and on days when they will be most effective and usable. The family will develop schedules with the AFTER Facilitator so that services do not unnecessarily interfere with other family responsibilities and commitments.

     Each Wraparound plan will designate a member of the team who will be the first called to respond to any emergency or urgent matter that may arise that effects the goals. This person will be available at all times by cell phone. A crisis plan will be developed for each family that will establish a protocol to be followed in the event that a crisis requires an immediate response. In the event of an immediate risk of the child’s placement outside the family a “White Flag” meeting will occur with 24 hours (an immediate meeting of the team with the family).

     Funding will be flexibly used to ensure responsiveness. When necessary providers will be placed on stand-by to ensure their availability. As far as is possible, staff will be hired or contracted in advance of anticipated need. The program will maintain a 15% general operating fund to accommodate the need for flexible expenditures that may be unpredictable.

 (7)   Strategies linked to family & community strengths:

     All AFTER Adoptive Family Wraparound Plans will be firmly based upon family and community strengths, both those that were originally identified when the child was first placed in the home, and those that have evolved since that time.

 (8)   Perseverance in support & assistance:

     AFTER will persevere to prevent the institutionalization of adopted children, except when that decision is the only option remaining to preserve the adoptive family. In the event that institutionalization occurs, the AFTER family team will continue to function to assist the child's return to the family as quickly as possible.

 (9)   Commitment to permanence:

     All AFTER services are based on the absolute belief that children must have one enduring permanent family to always call their own.

 (10) Care provided in the context of home & community:

     AFTER services will be community, clinic and home based. Should foster care placement be necessary the AFTER family team will coordinate it's provision, as far as possible within the local community, with a plan for the earliest possible reunification of the child.

 (11) Mechanisms & structures supporting parent advocacy & leadership:

     Adoptive parents are invited to seek AFTER's assistance in starting their own neighborhood support groups, in developing local children's groups, and serving on the AFTER Steering Committee. Adoptive parents who become expert in any area of adoptive family need or education become a resource for the adoption community as a whole, by serving as Parent Partners and education group leaders, contributing to the AFTER online "Knowledge Base", becoming "buddies" for other families, and by providing experienced respite care.