The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Foster system feeling effect of pandemic
More than 4,000 children currently live in foster care in Connecticut, waiting to return home to their families or be adopted.
But where families used to have consistent in-person visits, keeping contact amid the coronavirus pandemic has meant phone calls or video chats instead.
“Just like staff are anxious, our kids are, too,” Department of Children and Families Commissioner Vanessa Dorantes said. “To help tamper down anxiety, we’re doing everything we can to make sure they stay connected with their families.”
For most children in foster care, reunification with family is the first desired outcome, Dorantes said. So even during the pandemic, the department
“Just like staff are anxious, our kids are, too.” Vanessa Dorantes,
DCF Commissioner
is working toward that for children.
“I’m sure that this crisis is going to impact reunification efforts in a host of ways,” Dorantes said, but it
remains to be seen how.
Social workers, who usually work hands-on with children and families, have had to distance themselves. Around 80 percent of DCF’s staff are teleworking, doing visits and followups virtually with families, but some things — investigations, court appearances — still require in-person interactions to support care, Dorantes said.
“The work continues; it’s the nature of the work that can change,” said said Ken Mysogland, bureau chief of external affairs at DCF.
That’s why DCF has increased virtual connection, so that even if visits between parents and children aren’t possible because of public health risk, the relationship doesn’t weaken, Dorantes said.
Under some circumstances, the department tries to coordinate face-to face-contact in high-risk cases, she said.
Overall, though, child welfare agencies have had to think of things differently than the public amid the pandemic, Dorantes said. The department has had several foster parents test positive for COVID-19, but each case has necessitated its own response, she said.
“We don’t immediately want to move a child that has a positive COVID-19 parent,” Dorantes said. “We have to take it case by case from a public health and child welfare perspective.”
To prepare for the transition to teleworking, Dorantes said the department took inventory of the 4,000 children in foster care and identified supports foster families needed for staying connected.
When the department inventoried its more than 2,000 foster homes, more than 100 parents responded that they would make space for a child if they were to positive for COVID-19, Dorantes said.
“We know we’ll have our own kind of surge, if the needs increase, we understand our families will react to this in various ways. In the moment, when we’re looking for placement, it’s hard to ask for it in the moment of need. Now we know if the need arises the resource is there.”
The department works closely with its sister agencies, partners and providers, such as law enforcement, education professionals, family support agencies and others.
The Family and Children’s Agency, based in Norwalk, is one organization that works closely with DCF and is facing the same challenges of teleworking.
In complement with DCF, the agency has 125 children in therapeutic foster care, serving children with high social, emotional, behavioral or medical needs. It also is contracted by DCF for caregiver support and family preservation programs.
Like DCF, the agency is continuing all its services by working remotely using a telehealth program to conduct video visits with families and DCF.
“The biggest challenge is kids aren’t able to get physical visits with their families,” said Mary Ellen Hass, executive vice president and chief operating offier at FCA. “At all costs, we’re continuing to move forward with permanency if that’s the goal.”
Hass said they’re also taking the necessary health precautions and if a foster parent were to test positive for COVID-19, the child would stay there, but they haven’t encountered that yet.
The agency continues to get referrals for foster care from DCF, Hass said.
Since some care necessitates in-person visits for DCF, Dorantes said they’ve established a tight triage process with supervisors and managers when there needs to be face-to-face interaction.
“It’s a delicate balance of the needs of staff with the mission-critical work of DCF,” Dorantes said. Several staff have tested positive for COVID-19, she said.
The department is working closely with the judicial system, which also has been affected by the pandemic.
DCF saw one adoption occur virtually soon after teleworking started, Dorantes said, but with many courts having closed or limited proceedings, the system is backlogged with cases and the highest priority cases of temporary custody and juvenile matters are being handled first.
Judge Bernadette Conway, the chief administrative judge for juvenile matters in New Haven’s Juvenile Court, allowed for lawyers and DCF workers in temporary custody cases to conference by phone inside or outside the courthouse.
The department is looking ahead for situations that could occur during the pandemic, to help prepare for the nuances in child protection services that workers might encounter, Dorantes said.
For example, when people are in close quarters, there could be an increase in intimate partner violence, Dorantes said, and the agency is trying to keep pulse on that to stay ahead of the need for services.
“The entire child welfare system has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Mysogland said. “We won’t know right now the full effect of how these new ways of operating impact us until we get back to as close to the way it was as possible. We’ve done intensive work but literally every day new information comes in.”
“The entire child welfare system has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We won’t know right now the full effect of how these new ways of operating impact us until we get back to as close to the way it was as possible.”
Ken Mysogland