Adoptalk & Publications

The Permanency Toolkit Series

All of the videos in the series are designed to:

• Offer specific court-endorsed, effective strategies to help meet AFSA timelines and achieve permanency for children in a timely fashion
  Introduce essential aspects of mediation, family group decision making, and concurrent planning
• Inspire communities to try programs known to be working well in best practice sites
• Place the approaches in the context of children's emotional development and timelines

Context: Actual courtroom, mediation, family decision making, and concurrent planning families illustrate the three strategies. Spokespersons include judges, social service administrators, attorneys, cutting-edge program originators/innovators and experienced case and court workers.

Permanency Toolkit: Family Group Decision Making (VHS 25 minutes) A demonstration of how and why the strength-based Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) process improves safety and permanency outcomes for children. These interventions are generally organized by social service departments, often used very early in cases, and empower families to make decisions about their children's care, protection, and permanency - sometimes even before the system becomes deeply involved. FGDM is unique because it employs private family time to enable family members to create plans based on family strengths. The video captures the powerful emotions families experience in finding solutions to their problems, and answers many questions case workers and community members have about this progressive process.

Permanency Toolkit: Dependency Mediation (VHS 30 minutes) An exploration of how mediation empowers parents and other parties in a child protection case to find solutions that are in the best interest of the children. The video shows how mediation is often organized through the court system, useful at many stages of cases, and especially applicable to issues that would otherwise be litigated, and covers who will be included in the mediation, how confidentiality issues may be handled, potential savings in court time and costs, how the cases are resolved and endorsed by the bench, and ongoing compliance issues.

Permanency Toolkit: Concurrent Planning (VHS 30 minutes) A persuasive look at how caseworkers, parents, and foster/adoptive families use this child-focused strategy to ensure timely permanency for children in out-of-home care. The video shows how the process of permanency planning, or concurrent planning (CP), can reduce the child's time in the system, caseloads, the numbers of children in foster homes, as well as human and fiscal costs associated with the child welfare system. Topics include child development principles, prevention of attachment disorders, how courts and social services implement this practice, differential assessments, full disclosure and how fost/adopt families may work with birth families toward reunification.

A Plan for Joseph: An Actual Family Group Conference (VHS 75 minutes) Edit from an actual four-hour family group conference including private family time. It may be viewed as a whole, or started and stopped to promote discussion among professionals interested in the subject, especially those who are training to run family group decision meetings.

To order one or more of these videos, please download the PDF order form and send it to Courter Films & Associations, 121 NW Crystal Street, Crystal River, FL 34428; 352-795-2156; e-mail: info@courterfilms.com.

Introduction to Mediation, Family Group Conferencing and Concurrent Planning: Pathways to Permanence (VHS 30 minutes) This overview video was underwritten by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is available FREE from the foundation by faxing a request to 614-766-3871 or sending an e-mail request to shawndreka_thomas@wendys.com.