3 Ways The Local Church Can Support Family Reunification
Family restoration is powerful and important.
As Christians, we should look at reunification and see a reflection of Christ's own humility and mercy. In foster care, the breaking of a family occurs; but in reunification, families can be restored to one another. And the Church can aid the restoration process by imitating Christ's humility and offering grace to families in crisis.
So then, what are some tangible ways to help?
Just as the Church is the Body of Christ and has different gifts, there are several ways the Church can approach the goal of reunification.
Recruit foster parents.
Consider fostering may seem counterintuitive to reunification efforts, but that is not the case! Raising up well-trained, loving foster parents actually helps to bring about successful reunification with biological parents when possible.
Having a plentiful base of foster families offers increased options and opportunities for a child’s success. Social workers can make placement decisions that better help reunification efforts, rather than simply answering the question, “Is there an open bed?”
For instance, finding a foster home close to the child’s community is often crucial. When there is a shortage of foster families, children entering care might have to move to a different community away from their school, friends, and familiar places. This creates even more disruption for children and makes visitations with biological family challenging.
In fact, research and practice consistently show that frequent, high-quality visits between children and their birth parents are one of the strongest predictors of successful reunification.¹ Removing barriers for visitations by ensuring children and parents can easily reach each other is one simple but important way we can support families working toward reunification.
So then, what’s the church’s first step?
It often starts with education and raising awareness. Feature a foster care story or video at your church. Host a panel of foster parents, former youth from foster care, or social workers for a Q&A or round-table discussion. Organize an after-service interest meeting (with coffee and snacks!). Project Belong exists to help you take these steps. Don’t reinvent the wheel — reach out so we can be a resource to you.
And afterwards, you might just need someone to talk with one-on-one. Our staff is made up of many foster and adoptive parents who would be happy to meet you, offer insight to the process, and address any questions or concerns you have.
Create a Care Community Ministry.
A Care Community is simply a formal structure for “being the village” to a family needing support.
Small teams of 4-6 individuals provide practical wrap-around support that families need when caring for vulnerable children. Each individual commits to playing their part in the Care Community: transportation for children’s appointments, weekly meals, some assistance with laundry and other chores — anything that helps the mental or physical load for parents who need to intentionally focus on their children’s needs.
With a Care Community, foster families can care for children longer and stronger.
When a foster family is well supported, we can decrease the chances of children having to displace into a new home. Displacement is an unfortunate reality in foster care, with children experiencing an average of 8.3 displacements nationwide. But research has shown that better placement stability improves reunification outcomes.²
“Without our Care Community, we wouldn’t have lasted the 18 months that was needed to find a strong familial placement for the kids. They would have reentered the system and gone through a cycle of being split up and probably multiple placements. Instead, these kids succeeded and their families got to love them for the rest of their lives.” - Fairfax Foster Family
Care Communities can help biological families become resilient.
What if we came around not just the foster families, but also the biological parents? When teams provide wrap-around support to biological families, we call that a Primary Care Community (PCC). PCCs can provide parents with the practical, relational, and emotional support needed to address the root causes of their family’s separation.
Support your local caseworkers.
Child welfare professionals bear one of the most important responsibilities in our communities: the safety and well-being of our children. These social workers have a hard job, resulting in high rates of burnout and a historical turnover rate of between 20-40% per year.
Studies have shown that an important factor in achieving permanency for children and families is consistency and continuity of case managers. Changes in case managers force families to start over with new workers, often resulting in lack of trust and delays in moving ahead with required plans to achieve permanency.³
As the Body of Christ, we’re called to care for and serve our neighbors in child welfare as they bear heavy burdens.
So then how can the Church support our local caseworkers?
First, build a relationship with your local agency.
Some of the ways we’ve seen churches step into include: bringing free lunch to their local office or branch; dropping off appreciation baskets; and offering resources, training, or support groups.
Before you start cold-calling, perhaps you already have an in. Local nonprofits like Project Belong exist to be a bridge between the Church and your local agencies, helping you to identify key relationships and opportunities to pursue.
Second, a little one-on-one encouragement doesn’t hurt.
You may not be able to offer support to your local branch as a whole, which is okay. Could you intentionally spend time praying for, encouraging, and supporting one social worker? In our SocialStars program, Project Belong connects church members to a Child Welfare social worker for regular encouragement and gestures of support.
It may be simple, but we believe it is important — act of seeing and encouragement.
By acknowledging our social workers and the good and important work they do for our community, we can come alongside them in a small but mighty way.
“These families and social workers are heroes doing incredibly difficult work. If we can help carry just a fraction of the workload, perhaps the system works better for the kids and the results improve. It is great to have opportunities for our families to serve and see their amazing work.” - Stafford Crossing Community Church