115th CONGRESS Printed for the use of the 

2nd Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

In the Best Interest of the Child: 

Best Practices for Keeping 

Families Safely Together 

DECEMBER 14, 2018 

Briefing of the 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

Washington: 2019 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER


CSCESeal.EPS
(2) 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

234 Ford House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515 

202–225–1901 

csce@mail.house.gov 

http://www.csce.gov 

@HelsinkiComm 

Legislative Branch Commissioners 

HOUSE 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, NEW JERSEY

Co-Chairman 

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, FLORIDA

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, ALABAMA

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, TEXAS

STEVE COHEN, TENNESSEE

RICHARD HUDSON, NORTH CAROLINA

RANDY HULTGREN, ILLINOIS

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, TEXAS

GWEN MOORE, WISCONSIN

SENATE 

ROGER WICKER, MISSISSIPPI, 

Chairman 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. MARYLAND

JOHN BOOZMAN, ARKANSAS

CORY GARDNER, COLORADO

MARCO RUBIO, FLORIDA

JEANNE SHAHEEN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

THOM TILLIS, NORTH CAROLINA

TOM UDALL, NEW MEXICO

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, RHODE ISLAND

Executive Branch Commissioners 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

[II]

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

(3) 

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in Finland on August 

1, 1975, by the leaders of 33 European countries, the United States and Canada. As of 

January 1, 1995, the Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security and 

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The membership of the OSCE has expanded to 56 participating States, reflecting the breakup of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. 

The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings of the participating States’ permanent representatives are held. In addition, specialized seminars and 

meetings are convened in various locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior 

Officials, Ministers and Heads of State or Government. 

Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the fields of military 

security, economic and environmental cooperation, and human rights and humanitarian 

concerns, the Organization is primarily focused on initiatives designed to prevent, manage 

and resolve conflict within and among the participating States. The Organization deploys 

numerous missions and field activities located in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, the 

Caucasus, and Central Asia. The website of the OSCE is: <www.osce.org>. 

ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki 

Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to monitor and encourage 

compliance by the participating States with their OSCE commitments, with a particular 

emphasis on human rights. 

The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of 

State, Defense and Commerce. The positions of Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the 

Senate and House every two years, when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff 

assists the Commissioners in their work. 

In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening hearings, issuing reports that 

reflect the views of Members of the Commission and/or its staff, and providing details 

about the activities of the Helsinki process and developments in OSCE participating 

States. 

The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of U.S. policy 

regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff participation on U.S. Delegations to OSCE meetings. Members of the Commission have regular contact with 

parliamentarians, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and private individuals from participating States. The website of the Commission 

is: <www.csce.gov>. 

[III]

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

(4) 

In the Best Interest of the Child: 

Best Practices for Keeping 

Families Safely Together 

DECEMBER 14, 2018 

Page 

PARTICIPANTS 

Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General Counsel, Commission on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe .......................................................................................................................................... 1 

Maridel Sandberg, President and Executive Director, Together for Good ................................. 3 

Jessica Foster, Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships, Youth Villages .......................... 4 

Christine Calpin, Managing Director for Public Policy, Casey Family Programs ..................... 7 

[IV]

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

(1) 

In the Best Interest of the Child: 

Best Practices for Keeping 

Families Safely Together 

December 14, 2018 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

Washington, DC 

The briefing was held at 10:30 a.m. in room G-11, Dirksen Senate Office Building, 

Washington, DC, Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General Counsel, Commission on Security 

and Cooperation in Europe, presiding. 

Panelists present: Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General Counsel, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Maridel Sandberg, President and Executive Director, 

Together for Good; Jessica Foster, Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships, Youth Villages; and Christine Calpin, Managing Director for Public Policy, Casey Family Programs. 

Ms. PARKER. Good morning. On behalf of Chairman Roger Wicker and Co-Chairman 

Chris Smith, I would like to welcome you to this briefing of the Commission on Security 

and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission. My name is Allison 

Hollabaugh Parker. I’m general counsel at the Commission. We are a bicameral, bipartisan, independent Federal commission devoted to the promotion of human rights, military 

security, and economic cooperation in the 57 participating States of the Organization of 

Security and Cooperation in Europe. These states are composed of countries from North 

America, Europe, and Eurasia. 

The OSCE has a few commitments touching on our topic today. Some of those 

commitments regard parental rights, primarily the right of parents to direct the moral 

and religious education of their children and to bring the children up in the culture of 

the parents. This comes from the Vienna Declaration of the OSCE in 1989. OSCE commitments also generally reaffirm the right to protection of private and family life, which will 

be subject only to such restrictions as are prescribed by law and are consistent with internationally recognized human rights standards. 

Some international human rights standards, to which most of the OSCE participating 

States are subject, arguably allow broad state interventions in families based on the 

state’s conception of the best interest of the child. For instance, in Sweden and Germany, 

State education rather than home education by parents is believed to be in the best 

interest of the child. These states believe it is better to remove a child from its biological 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

2 

parents, rather than let the child be educated at home. Other participating states, such 

as Norway, regularly remove children from their homes because the parents, quote, ‘‘lack 

parenting skills.’’ Norway has an extremely high level of children being removed from 

their parents, especially immigrant parents living in Norway, even where there has been 

no evidence of violence or drug abuse in the family. 

Between 2008 and 2014, Norway doubled the number of children being put into emergency care. The most common reason for such removals were, quote, ‘‘lack of parenting 

skills.’’ In 2015, the situation of children being removed from their parents in Norway was 

so dire that nearly 300 lawyers, psychologists, and social workers wrote a national notice 

of concern to the government of Norway. They said that a long list of children are exposed 

to serious failures of understanding and infringement of their rights by the low level of 

evidence required for removing these children from their homes. Several Norwegian families have received asylum in Poland out of fear that their children would be taken away 

in Norway. However, Norway’s low threshold for removals was influenced by a case in 

2008 where a child should have been removed from his home but was not and was subsequently killed by an unsafe parent in the home. 

The United States has also grappled with where the threshold should be for removal 

of children from their parents. One major consideration in this balancing of interests 

should be the potentially lifelong suffering and even abuse faced by children who were 

removed from their own families, and who remain without permanent families in the 

foster care system. The statistics in the United States, for those who have been removed 

permanently and not found new permanent families, are sobering. While foster families 

can offer critical and timely emergency care for children in need, studies show that children who stay in foster care without permanent parents suffer lifelong emotional harms 

and life skills underdevelopment. The extreme challenges faced by these children put 

them at a high risk for homelessness, unemployment, human trafficking, and even incarceration. More than 20,000 young people aged out of foster care in the United States in 

2016, deprived of the support of their own or adoptive permanent families. 

These children in the United States and Europe are perhaps saved from an immediate emergency by government officials seeking to act in their best interest, but then 

exposed to the lifelong harm of not belonging to a functioning forever-family. What if 

these youths and their families of origin had been given the support they needed to stay 

together—such as mental health services, substance use treatment, in-home parenting 

skill training, and supportive community? Today the commission is hosting a panel of 

experts on the frontlines of best practices to preserve families safely together. 

Our first speaker this morning is Maridel Sandberg. She is the president and executive director of Together for Good. She’s spent the last 36 years advocating for vulnerable 

children around the globe and protecting social orphans domestically. In her work, she 

has helped hundreds of families adopt children, and many others foster. She serves as a 

founding board member of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, and in 2017 launched 

Together for Good, which grew out of a vision to better love neighbors based on Isaiah 

1:17, ‘‘Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, 

and plead the widows’ cause.’’ Maridel is the mother of eight children, three by birth and 

five adopted, ages 15 through 38. Her greatest job is being called grandma by 16 grandchildren, six of them adopted from the United States, Ethiopia, and Uganda. 

Ms. Sandberg. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

3 

Ms. SANDBERG. Thank you. Together for Good is a network of volunteers in the private sector and professional staff that come alongside parents that are facing crisis and 

stress, and provide ongoing social support—practical help—so that families are not left 

alone in their time of crisis and children can be safe until stability is established. We 

come alongside families in a multitude of ways. We have crisis hosting of children. 

Approved families are hosting children temporarily while parents have a safe option to 

clarify their issues. We offer respite care, periodic pre-planned, daytime or overnight care, 

to alleviate that parental stress. We want to pursue healthy relational development. 

We all know that everybody needs an extra friend, and so we offer that once a week, 

or one time per month, and then also wraparound care for families—both families that 

are hosting children, but also families that are in those crises. Our best work is done in 

collaboration with the community at large. Parents are empowered to ask for help. Parents are empowered to not worry about whether they’re going to lose their children to 

foster care. Parents voluntarily ask for help, and we voluntarily provide that help. We 

uphold and honor and respect for the God-given role as a parent. And we volunteer to 

help as they volunteer to ask for help. We believe that becomes the power for change. 

Just this week, I met with a woman named Yolanda. I said, let’s meet at McDonald’s 

and play on the playground with the kids while we do paperwork. And as I sat at McDonald’s Yolanda said to me, I’ve never done this before. And I said, What? She said, I’ve 

never sat across the table with a mom at McDonald’s having a Coke. And I said, What 

do you mean? And she said, Well, Maridel, I have a professional who comes in to make 

sure I take my meds. I have another professional who comes in to make sure my kids 

are getting to school. And I have mental health visits once a week with my therapist. But 

I don’t have a friend like this. 

That’s where the community needs to make a difference. Early intervention, child 

abuse prevention. We believe that power of relational support and the fundamental value 

of family preservation. Children belong with their parents whenever possible, but sometimes that’s not possible. And then we do engage with the foster care system and the children protection workers. But early intervention, giving that opportunity to a family that 

just needs extra support—who doesn’t need a grandma? Who doesn’t need a friend in their 

life? We all do. This important work is going to be the change agent because we believe 

that people don’t know about what’s happening in child welfare. 

The outside world wants to help, but they don’t know how. And so how do we provide 

a large net of engagement to say: Faith community, you have a place at the table here. 

Be a good neighbor. Love your neighbor. Be a good friend. Be that person at school who 

notices the child in crisis, and approach that mother and offer support. We have host 

families that are approved through background check who will temporarily host children, 

but also be a good friend to those families. It’s going to take a village. And as I said earlier, the village is really large. And we’re all needed to play a part. 

Thank you. 

Ms. PARKER. Thank you, Ms. Sandberg. I appreciate Together for Good’s approach of 

standing in the gap between families in need and the legal aspects of the foster care 

system, offering that intermediate space to avoid crisis that would entangle the children 

in foster care actually occurs. 

Speaking next we have Jessica Foster, executive director of strategic partnerships for 

Youth Villages. She works with their partnering initiatives with a focus on building relaCSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

4 

tionships and agreements with partners and payers, supporting partners in managing and 

operationalizing Youth Village programs, driving YVLifeSet growth and other services 

through partners, and achieving the organization’s Federal policy goals. 

Before joining Youth Villages in 2011, Foster was at the Boston Consulting Group, 

where she supported the strategy and design of multiple site implementation plans for 

global corporate merger and acquisition projects. She evaluated and recommended 

improvements to performance management of a large public school district, and developed 

government advocacy strategies for a large consumer packaged goods company. 

Ms. Foster is also an alumna of the Hill. She served here as a legislative aide for 

Senator Arlen Specter on foster care, adoption, welfare, economic development, public 

housing, and nonprofit issues. She holds an MBA in marketing from Wharton School and 

a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Brown University. 

Ms. Foster. 

Ms. FOSTER. Thank you. I’m going to stay here because I have some slides. But good 

morning. Thank you for having me. And thank you Helsinki Commission for inviting me 

and my colleagues here also speaking today. I’m going to share a little bit about just what 

is Youth Villages and, more importantly, through the history of Youth Villages’ work with 

children and families, what are some things that we have learned to share with folks on 

the Hill, to share with the field about what types of interventions and approaches are 

effective at keeping children safe and stable in their families and in their communities. 

Youth Villages is a national organization in the U.S. And it’s been—I’m not very educated about what happens outside of the United States. It was really interesting to hear 

about Norway and other countries. And while we have a long way to go in the United 

States, we have learned a lot and evolved a lot in the child welfare and foster care system 

in the past several decades. Youth Villages was founded in 1986 with the merger of two 

residential programs. So there was a program for children who were removed from their 

home, brought to a residential facility, treated, and then returned to their home. 

Over the 32-year history of Youth Villages as an organization, through collecting data 

on the outcomes of how the children and families that we serve are doing, we learned that 

a lot of these kids didn’t do very well when they went back home. And that was because 

you really need to treat the whole family and serve children in their home family if you 

want to have sustainable and lasting change. So with that, over our history the organization has evolved to have a much more significant focus on preventing children from being 

removed from their homes in the first place. Or if they’re removed and taken into custody, 

providing them support when they return back to their home and into their community 

so that they have a stable return and don’t bounce back and forth into the system. 

Youth Villages can’t serve every child in America that is at risk of entering the foster 

care system. But we do believe that we have learned from our experience, and through 

sharing what we have learned we can have an impact on every child that is in the system 

in the United States. This is just a quick snapshot of where Youth Villages is, the states 

that we operate in. And as you can see, predominantly the services being provided by 

Youth Villages, either by us or by other public and private agencies that we train in best 

practices, is interim family services and older youth services for young people aging out 

of foster care. 

I want to highlight five tenets of evidentiary family restoration. That’s a term we 

came up with at Youth Villages. And it was really in our effort to crystallize what are 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

5 

the key elements of effective service provision for keeping children safe and stable at 

home in their communities. So these are approaches that we would recommend to other 

organizations or other countries as they’re thinking about how to protect and preserve 

families. 

The first is treating children and families simultaneously. So as I mentioned at the 

beginning, we started as an organization really treating children separate from their parents in residential programs. But we learned very quickly through collecting data on outcomes that the most effective approach is to be treating children and families simultaneously. So primarily Youth Villages has staff in the field, in families’ homes, sitting on 

the sofa in the living room with a family or going to McDonald’s with the family—whatever is the most convenient for the family, the time and location that works for them, 

to resolve whatever issues that they may be having. 

The next is requiring measurable, positive long-term outcomes. There are a lot of 

organizations out there in the United States, and I imagine internationally, that care a 

lot about the fate of children. They don’t necessarily know if what they’re doing is actually 

making a difference and making a sustainable difference. We are very committed to 

tracking the outcomes of kids and families we serve up to 2 years post to when they complete receiving services from us. And we strongly encourage other organizations and 

government agencies to look at the data post-completion of services to really know if what 

we’re investing public dollars in is making a difference. 

The third is sustaining treatment in the community. A lot of organizations—a lot of 

service providers require that families come to them, come to their office. Public agencies 

require that too. We have a strong belief in having workers go out into the field and meet 

children and families where it is most convenient for them, where they are comfortable, 

in their community. 

The fourth is using highly intensive clinical protocols. Most of the children that are 

in the child welfare and foster care system or at risk of entering the system have experienced some sort of trauma in their life, instability in their life that’s leading to that 

involvement. And it’s really critical that the staff that are working with children and 

families be trained clinically, be clinically informed using evidence-based interventions 

and driving clinical practice in how they’re serving kids and families. 

And then the last one is delivering accountability to the families being served and 

the funders who are paying for services. Accountability is something we take very seriously. One way, through our service models, that we achieve accountability is that we 

have one staff that is responsible for the success of the family. So rather than saying, this 

person’s working on school, this person’s working on housing, this person working on clinical support, we have one person that builds deep trust and engagement with a family. 

And they are trained to address the range of issues that that child and family is facing 

and to, as an individual, be responsible for the success of that family. And we believe that 

that type of program structure and organizational structure drives lasting change and 

requires much less coordination and time spent sharing information between workers, 

with one person who’s really dedicated to the success of a child and a family. 

How am I doing on time? 

Ms. PARKER. Great. 

Ms. FOSTER. Okay. This next slide is just a quick snapshot. And I took it to share— 

the takeaway here isn’t just what has to happen in a home with a family to be successful. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

6 

It’s also really how does an organization have to be structured to be capable of achieving 

results. And so not only do you have to have a good program model in place that is 

designed to make a difference with kids and families, you have to have a way of monitoring how that program is being implemented, particularly if it’s being implemented in 

different locations, and also to track the outcomes of what is being achieved through those 

services. 

Not only does Youth Villages have a defined program model of how we work with 

kids and families, we’re measuring how that program is being implemented on a daily 

basis. Are workers visiting families? Are they using intervention? How timely are their 

sessions? And then we’re also tracking the outcome of those services, and so trying to 

build an infrastructure for good in-home family services in another country, not only 

looking at what does the program look like, but what are the agencies implementing that 

program, and how are they structured to maintain quality and to track outcomes over 

time? 

Just to give you a quick sense of some of the challenges of the children that we work 

with, and these probably translate across country lines, a range of things—from behavioral challenges, to trauma from abandonment, different types of abuse, depression, selfesteem, running away, drug and alcohol abuse, problems with sexual behavior—a range 

of issues are what come to us when we’re working with children and families. And it is 

that clinically informed and individualized model where a worker is providing very specific interventions to different children in different families to support them that is critical, because different kids come with different issues that they need to work through. 

Okay, I’m going to skip through the next couple slides. And what I really just want 

to end on is through all of this work that we have provided over the 32 years of Youth 

Villages’ history, we’ve crystallized a number of key principles that need to be in place 

for an effective and well-functioning child welfare system. The first, which is really the 

theme of this panel today, is that leaders are philosophically aligned with the need to 

keep children and families safely at home in their communities. And that philosophical 

alignment from the top around what is the goal is essential. Another is that children are 

systematically assessed when they’re coming into the system or being raised anywhere in 

the system, and that we’re assessing what’s really going on. What are the underlying 

drivers and challenges? You can’t solve a problem until you understand what that 

problem is. 

The next that’s very significant in the United States is collaboration among agencies. 

A lot of these children and families touch different agencies—they’re touching the child 

welfare system, the juvenile justice system, the education system, the health care system. 

How do you share data across agencies and make sure that there’s coordination? 

The fourth is community-based providers. Youth Village is a provider. We contract 

with public agencies to implement services. But they’re held accountable for high quality 

and they’re also selecting contracts based on quality, as opposed to just whoever has the 

lowest-cost proposal. The fifth is that public dollars are used wisely. The sixth is that 

services are clinically informed and effective. 

The seventh is that systems are in place to reunite children and families as quickly 

as possible. I know Christine is going to be talking about the Family First Prevention 

Services Act which has a very strong program on trying to focus on preventing kids from 

entering care. It’s also very important to think about how you bring children back into 

the community if they have been brought into custody. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

7 

And then the last is the importance of supporting young people who emancipate or 

age out of a system in the United States. About 20,000 young people annually exit the 

foster care system having never achieved a permanent family placement. And so it is a 

responsibility of us as a country to help those young people successfully transition to 

adulthood, since we failed them in providing them a safe family in their childhood. 

Ms. PARKER. Thank you, Ms. Foster. I so appreciate Youth Villages’ focus on treating 

the whole family and serving the children within the family to have sustainable change. 

We all want to see children reunited with their families, but unless there are programs 

to help the families change complicated dynamics that are preventing the child from 

thriving it might be a revolving door back into the foster care system. 

Up next we have Christine Calpin. She is the managing director of public policy at 

Casey Family Programs, where she heads the foundation’s efforts to inform and education 

Federal policymakers about the need for comprehensive child welfare finance reform. She 

also leads the efforts to improve the child welfare public policy in states across the United 

States. Calpin has been working in public policy for 10 years. Most recently she worked 

as an independent consultant on child welfare, child care, and family support programs 

for states and tribes. Prior to that, she worked for 2 years in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

She first served as an associate director of the Child Care Bureau, and then as an 

associate commissioner for the Children’s Bureau, where she oversaw a $7.2 billion budget 

and 130 employees responsible for all child abuse prevention, foster care, and adoption 

programs delivered by state, local and tribal authorities. 

Calpin is an alumna of the Hill as well. She has served here as a congressional 

staffer—the lead one—for the Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee of the 

House Ways and Means Committee. She worked with Members of Congress there and 

with others on passing legislation affecting programs including child welfare, child care, 

and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as TANF, programs. 

Ms. Calpin. 

Ms. CALPIN. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Christine Calpin and 

I’m the managing director of public policy at Casey Family Programs. And I’m pleased 

to be here with my colleagues and welcome the opportunity today to introduce you to 

Casey Family Programs and describe our vision for supporting children and families 

across the United States. Founded in 1966 with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, 

Casey Family Programs is the nation’s largest operating foundation focused on safely 

reducing the need for foster care and building communities of hope for children and families across America. We work directly with child welfare agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and directly with 16 American 

Indian tribal nations to influence long-lasting improvements to the safety and success of 

children, families and communities where they live. 

We also work hand-in-hand with birth parents, with foster parents, and with an 

alumni of foster care, as we strongly believe their voice and their stories must be included 

to inform policy and practice change. This work, as well as the growing body of research 

on child development, brain science, and the significant impact of adverse childhood 

experiences has made clear that long-term foster care is not good for children and families. We need a robust system of supports and services, and a full continuum of care and 

for all of our communities and individuals to work together. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

8 

Unfortunately, for the past several decades the Federal child welfare funding that 

we’ve provided has not supported these efforts. For every $7 available for children in 

foster care, only $1 was available to invest in services that prevented the need for foster 

care. Because of the national dialog, though, and all of the wonderful efforts that have 

been done to date, Congress debated and enacted a bipartisan and historic policy change 

regarding how Federal funding can be used by States and tribes for foster care and child 

protection. Known as the Family First Prevention Services Act, or what I’ll call Family 

First, the president signed this into law in February 2018. 

Family First represents a fundamental shift in how the Federal Government partners 

with states and tribes in their efforts to support children and their families. Key facets 

of this law include unlimited entitlement funding for states and tribes to support prevention services for those at-risk children, their families, their parents, their kin, caregivers, 

in evidence-based programs that address a number of the challenges we’ve discussed 

today—substance abuse prevention and treatment, mental health services, and in-home 

parent skills training. The law also significantly increases the oversight and ensures that 

the placement of children in group care settings is both appropriate and necessary. 

Why? Because we know that children do best in family-like settings. Children who 

are raised in congregant care are almost two and a half times more likely to become delinquent than their peers in foster care. They have poorer educational outcomes and test 

scores. They’re less likely to graduate from high school. And they are at greater risk of 

further physical abuse when they’re placed in group homes. Fortunately, we’ve seen a 

shift in placements resulting in a reduction in congregant care. But we must continue to 

do more. 

Family First also provides for increased opportunities and supports for relatives who 

are the caregivers of their own family members. The research on kinship foster care tell 

us that children who cannot remain with their birth parents are more likely to have 

stable and safe childhoods when raised by relatives. But frequently, relative caregivers 

have told us that the supports they most often need include respite care, treatment, financial support, and mental health services for them, for their individual family members, 

and for others to really help them cope. Because of Family First, Federal funding can now 

support states in their efforts to allow children to safely remain with their families and 

with their family members, while at the same time continuing to support foster care 

placements when children absolutely need this. 

Family First makes it clear that our national child and family wellbeing response systems will not operate as though it’s fully possible to help children without addressing the 

wellbeing of families in their communities. We’ve always known that it’s vitally important 

that we intervene as early as possible. And Family First, through this funding, will give 

states and tribes the ability to target existing Federal resources in these important ways. 

It’s a monumental shift toward transforming the way we support families, but we know 

there’s more work that needs to be done. And we’re looking forward to the ongoing dialog 

and opportunities to discuss these challenges ahead. 

So thank you very much and we look forward to any questions. 

Ms. PARKER. Thank you, Ms. Calpin. Thank you for Casey Family Programs’ work 

and Youth Villages’ work; it was a huge lift to write and to get the Family First Prevention Services Act through Congress. We are eagerly awaiting its full implementation. And 

that would be my first question: How are we doing at implementation? It passed in February. It’s been almost a year. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

9 

Ms. CALPIN. Yes, thank you for the question. It has been almost a year. A couple of 

pieces I would point out that I had in my testimony is when we talk about Family First 

being such a monumental shift, the legislation did envision a timeline for supporting 

states in really thinking about the new investments. The prevention services that were 

identified in the law first become available to states and to tribes on October 1 of 2019. 

So we’ve been aggressively engaged with them and with the administration in terms of 

getting the guidance and direction that’s necessary out to states to really think about how 

this can be a tool in thinking about a new vision and system for supporting children and 

families. 

The administration has put a lot of really important direction and guidance out. We 

do, however, continue to encourage a lot of community stakeholders and a lot of other 

partners to really become involved in working with their states and helping to envision 

and think about where this could go and what could happen. So a lot of exciting direction. 

A lot of exciting opportunity. There still remain challenges ahead. And we’re certainly 

looking for stakeholders and others to become engaged in helping to really educate on all 

these new opportunities. 

Ms. PARKER. You mentioned in your comments that congregant care put children at 

a doubled risk for physical abuse and other forms of abuse and a doubled risk of being 

delinquent, risk of very low educational attainment. Congregant care is a smaller form 

of an orphanage. We moved away from the orphanage model to congregant care. It still 

operates parallel in some cases with foster care in the United States, which is family 

based. We’re talking about failures of the foster care system and trying to keep children 

out of foster care system. Would it also be wise to fix the foster care system, or is that 

something that has a fundamental flaw that can’t fully be fixed? 

Ms. CALPIN. So I’m happy to start, and then would welcome my other colleagues. 

Absolutely. I mean, the importance of maintaining the safety and protection of children 

is fundamental. And a child protection system that does that in terms of allowing for 

appropriate foster care placements when absolutely necessary is one that we should support. And we should continue to strive and expect the best quality, the best care, and the 

most appropriate settings for these children. The improvements in foster care, to that end, 

do need to focus more on the upfront opportunities we have to do a much better job of 

identifying family members and community members who can care for our children at risk 

of foster care. 

The placement instabilities and the movement of these children out of your schools 

and out of their communities just continues to exacerbate trauma. So there’s a lot that 

needs to be done to improve foster care. A piece of that, though, also needs to be a much 

better understanding and direction toward really understanding what it means for a 

child’s safety to be at risk, and so what it means for a child to need foster care. And all 

of that would help us get to a better place of serving children in foster care. 

Ms. FOSTER. And I’ll just add to that—Youth Villages provide a full continuum of care 

in a number of states, from prevention work in families and also residential programs that 

do provide care to children 24/7, when they are removed from their families. And I would 

echo Christine in saying that there will always be a need for a foster care system. There 

will always be children who are serious risk of harm, and the state needs to come in and 

provide immediate emergency support to them. And so we very much agree that there’s 

room for improvement in supporting bio families, supporting kin families, preventing 

entry, making entry into care as short as possible. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

10 

But there is absolutely an opportunity, and the Family First Act addressed this as 

well, in elevating the quality of those residential programs, ensuring that high-quality 

clinical services are being provided while children are placed in those settings, that those 

settings are utilized only when that’s really what is necessary for the child’s physical, 

mental, and behavioral health, and that when that type of setting isn’t necessary for those 

purposes, children are returned to a family-based setting. So we certainly believe that this 

whole continuum is necessary. 

There may very well need to be shifts in sort of where kids are and how long they’re 

staying in various placements. And the Federal legislation took a significant stab at 

shifting how that looks across the country. But that elevating what is best practice in 

every single setting and trying to bring up the quality of care nationally in all these different types of settings and arrangements will lead to a big improvement in the system. 

Ms. PARKER. How receptive have the states been thus far to the Family First Prevention Services Act? Because each state has—under our Constitution, states generally have 

the lead on childcare issues. The Federal Government backs them up. This is the Federal 

Government taking a huge step into what’s traditionally been a state area. Are the states 

open to this? Are the social welfare societies within the state, are they excited about it, 

or is it going to be an education process? 

Ms. CALPIN. It’s both. There is a considerable excitement about this. We’ve spent decades in this country with leaders discussing that the biggest shortcoming that we had in 

partnering with states in the protection of children was at the Federal level only starting 

that partnership once they removed a child from their family, and not really recognizing 

all of their efforts in keeping children in their communities and supporting efforts to keep 

them with their families. That said, doing that requires a robust package of services. 

Every child in every family who comes to the attention of child welfare needs a different 

response. It shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. 

Family First will be an incredible tool for these states. It will fund evidence-based 

mental health services. It will fund evidence-based substance abuse intervention, as well 

as evidence-based in-home parent skills training. But some of the families who will come 

to the attention of child welfare will need other services. So the excitement right now is 

in trying to figure out how best to leverage what Family First will do but build that into 

the system of what we know really helps all the families at the state level. So that 

requires a lot of challenges. It requires a lot of framework and planning. States are very 

much engaged in this. But at the same time, Family First took a very important and 

direct approach to making a policy statement about the values in this country and the 

importance of children being with families. 

And the changes to the group policies and the types of placements—as Jessica’s 

talked about in terms of requiring high-level oversight, high-level treatment services— 

basically say that if you place these children in settings that aren’t high quality and aren’t 

appropriate, you will do that at state cost. That created sort of a challenge, because the 

states who may not be as far along as others in having children in family life settings 

and who still have a lot of children in these congregant care placements are wondering 

financially what this means. And so seeing the value of prevention in a context of the 

ongoing investment they have right now in group homecare has limited some of the 

engagement in some state levels. 

And so I think the excitement around this needs to really focus on that this is really 

the chance to put our dollars where our values are, and not to think about the goal being 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

11 

child welfare operating as it currently does. Family First was about trying to say business 

as usual is not what we believe works for children and families. And, as you can imagine, 

not everyone is as receptive to that as you might like. But I think everyone is really trying 

to learn and understand where the opportunities are and how best to really take steps 

forward in this space. 

Ms. PARKER. So just to talk practicalities, how much time are we talking about for 

care for each family? Someone might say, oh, it’s much easier to take the child from the 

family and put them in care than it is to fix a broken family system—whether it be the 

parents or the extended family. In the experience of Youth Villages and Together for 

Good, how long do these families need to have a high level of concentrated care? 

Ms. FOSTER. Well, I would say that in our experience you can more economically 

serve children in families when you prevent them from entering care in the first place, 

in terms of how much taxpayer dollars are going into providing support. So if we are able 

to intervene before a child is removed from their home, and work with the whole family, 

anywhere from 3 to 6 months, or so, of intensive work in that family’s home can lead to 

a much more stable situation. Once a child is removed from the home, first of all, typically 

the placements that they’re in cost more on a daily basis than they do if you’re working 

with that family. 

And often they get caught up in the system for years. And then if you want to return 

them to their biological family—which is the goal for most children who are in the foster 

care system, it is eventually to return to their biological family—the amount of time that 

family needs support to stabilize from that return is more time than if you had just provided services on the front end before bringing them into the system. So to Christine’s 

point, if we are able to get better, as a country, at identifying these young people who 

are imminent risk of coming into care, and intervening before they come into care, it will 

lead to better outcomes, but it will also be a more economical approach to services and 

intervention. 

Ms. SANDBERG. And I think that’s where Together for Good, while we’re a brand-new 

organization and trying to think outside the box in terms of what is best for children, that 

time is everything in the context of a parent feeling empowered to do well. When the gun 

of foster care is to their head at all times, it just changes the game in terms of their 

ability to change—no one changes based on a gun being put to their head. You better fix 

this or else. And so in our work, the goal of building trust and trusting relationships has 

been phenomenal. 

We’ve had women who have been in drug and alcohol treatment. Why would children 

need to go to foster care just because mom needs treatment? And so she voluntarily asks 

for help. And we provide that hosting experience while she’s in treatment. And during 

that time, the parent-child relationship is committed and growing, and the services 

around professional supervision of that case and our case management when we’re 

working with the drug treatment and our staff to come alongside that family, over time 

trust is built and the family feels empowered to move forward. 

Once we’ve served kids who are—Child Protection is no longer involved, and the case 

is closed, we’re dealing with the same sorts of trauma. And it takes longer. But in short, 

what’s the beautiful thing that we’re doing is really if a child doesn’t have to go to foster 

care and can be hosted by a private individual, that brings a cost savings to society as 

well, right? 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

12 

Ms. CALPIN. Yes. Yes, if I can just add, too. I think one of the lesser-known facts 

about our foster care system is that the most likely outcome for a child who enters foster 

care is to be reunified with their parents. And the reunifications tend to happen within 

about 11 months. Some happen within 2 months. These children are the families that 

we’re trying to understand most about the opportunities in Family First, because if you’re 

bringing a child into care for such a short window of time, after which you’re reunifying, 

did you really need to even remove that child from their family? 

I think the answer’s also a lot more complicated, because I think there’s also this 

perception in our foster care system that children come into foster care for reasons of 

physical abuse, sexual abuse, et cetera, which they do. But the data actually tell us that 

the largest percentage of children who are removed are removed for reasons that are categorized as neglect. And that spans the continuum of housing stability to truancy at 

schools. Those are much different responses that can be very quickly addressed. If we’re 

talking about lack of housing, again, in a world where housing is not so scarce for our 

families, stabilizing housing is a much different response than addressing abuse challenges for a child. 

And so some of this also relates to the ability of understanding how long a family 

needs to be formally involved and what is the child protection system whose responsibilities should be mitigating risk and safety for that child, versus the importance of making 

sure that every family and child is connected in their community. You know, we’ve talked 

a lot about the number of children who in this country, unfortunately, take their own lives 

every day. And what we absolutely do not want is for children to be safely reunified with 

their families at home, but in communities where that level of despair also becomes such 

an issue. 

And so it’s such a longer answer than just the notion of a program, because it specifically beings to think about how we as a country work with our space to design child 

protection programs that serve children as long as necessary, but then make sure—as you 

said—when you have, quote, ‘‘closed’’ a case, you haven’t done that without making sure 

there’s a connection, or a community partner, or someone there who can continue to assist 

that family, because as we all know—we’ve talked about the moms in McDonald’s, et 

cetera, we all look for those supports. We all look for those people who can help us. And 

that’s something that a child protection system can’t create, but that a community can, 

right? And that’s just going to be so important to our long-term success. 

Ms. PARKER. So, Ms. Sandberg, how does Together for Good get connected with parents and families that may need extra community support? And how do they help build 

community for those families? 

Ms. SANDBERG. Yes. So, in Minnesota, 70 percent of the time when a call is made 

to child protection it’s screened out, which means then there’s opportunity for a child to 

fall through the cracks, or a family. And so we have connections with either public health 

nurses and school social workers who are sometimes the very first to notice a child that’s 

near or a family that’s going through a temporary crisis. But it is just that homelessness 

crisis. And then identify from there those referrals that come to us. 

So then we do the intake process, and them match them with an approved family 

that would host the child temporarily and/or build those community relationships for that 

family, becoming more of an advocate/cheerleader for a family in the hybrid role, if you 

will, of opportunity. What we found most exciting is that the community at large truly 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

13 

does want to help and serve in ways that aren’t necessarily about the foster care system 

itself. But they see the needs and then are—given the opportunities, they want to help. 

We recruit people just through local churches. So we have teams built out by accountability. Each church has its own coordinator of care as well as the staff that oversees our 

cases. So we have about—again, we’re I think about 40 churches in the Minnesota area 

that are willing to help with families in crisis. And each church has its own coordinator. 

We monitor and train those people. So we provide that professional oversight to a 

mobilization of the community at large, connecting them with resources and skill sets. 

Ms. PARKER. So then you professionally screen the volunteer families that come to 

you? 

Ms. SANDBERG. Yes, ma’am. We have a full background check, home study experience, as well as references and training, especially on the issues of trauma-informed care 

and the opportunities to have best practice in that. It’s really important we know. 

Ms. PARKER. And how long do the families that are referred to you for assistance— 

how long do they stay connected with the communities that you help build for them? 

Ms. SANDBERG. Now—I mean, it’s over years. I mean, people build relationships that 

don’t really go away. That’s been the beautiful thing. But primarily the child is in care 

with us an average of about 50 days. So parents—[inaudible ]—that. But, again, during 

that time it’s continued parent-child visits, parent-child communication every day. There’s 

not a system separation time. And so parents are empowered to then put the oxygen mask 

on first, while their child’s safely being cared for, and over time that relationship builds 

so there’s an extra adult in their life. Simple things like, what do I do if I run out of formula in the middle of the night, I have someone to call, right? When I call you, you’re 

here for that. 

So mobilizing people who care has been a really powerful experience. There are 10 

families that are hosting children, but there are 45 families wrapping around those families, bringing support to the host family, bringing support to that family in crisis. I mean, 

one of the cries in Minnesota has been that foster parents feel unsupported in terms of 

extra resources and extra wraparound care, that respite becomes such a critical piece. And 

so while we grow this organization, we’ve had the opportunity to intersect in meaningful 

ways in that way as well to help support foster parents. 

Ms. PARKER. So you’re offering not only families to take the children in temporarily, 

but then families to give respite to the families that have taken the children in temporarily. 

Ms. SANDBERG. Absolutely. Yes. 

Ms. PARKER. And do you have enough families coming forward to do this? They’re 

doing it for free, yes? 

Ms. SANDBERG. Yes. People volunteer to help. There’s no money exchanged. Which 

is another highlight for parents, because they truly can understand, you’re not getting 

paid to take care of my child. And so that becomes just an opportunity for growth and 

expansion. People want to help. And then we provide that extra resource of support. 

Someone else is buying the diapers. Someone else is bringing you a meal. You don’t feel 

so weighted down by the experience of inviting another person into your home. There’s 

some phenomenal families out there who truly just want to help if given the opportunity, 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

14 

knowing then that they’re actually building a wall, a hedge, a protection, if you will, 

around the family. 

Ms. PARKER. And now is it different from the foster care system in the sense of the 

relationship between the child and their biological family during the period in which the 

child is in care? 

Ms. SANDBERG. Yes, it’s really no different than me asking you to watch my child 

for 2 weeks while we’re away. So we’re trying to do every-day conversations, meeting up 

for playdates. We try as best possible in the school systems to keep the kid in the same 

school, so those relationships are still in place. In the State of Minnesota this is allowed, 

because we have a statute that allows for power of attorney, so that I have the opportunity to give you power of attorney even for a temporary period of time, which then gives 

them the freedom—that host family—the freedom to act as parent if necessary, but then 

also engage mom in meaningful ways in terms of asking her questions about how she parents and what she thinks is best for her child. 

So that relationship is very critical. And the importance—the difference becomes 

when you and I meet and have a conversation, and I’m going to tell you about my child 

and—he’s allergic to peanut butter and make sure he uses his nookie at bedtime—it’s a 

whole different experience than a stranger taking my child away from me, and the fear 

that stranger is not caring for my child the way I want. That becomes a powerful source 

of then hope, which then creates opportunity to say: I’m going to wake up tomorrow 

morning and I’m going to go look for that housing that seems impossible. So it’s been a 

powerful thing, the story of hope doing this. 

Ms. PARKER. Ms. Calpin, in the U.S. foster care system, what is—if the child goes 

into official foster care, how does that affect the parent-child relationship? 

Ms. CALPIN. Well—and I was as she was speaking about this in terms of how it’s 

different from foster care—we’ve talked with birth parents about their experiences with 

the system, and what they found was challenging I characterize as in the child protection 

system we view our birth parents as a risk versus a strength. And what that unfortunately does is really create a huge barrier for that child and that parent to continue to 

develop, because I think every child expects their parent to care for them and to protect 

them. And so children can’t understand when they’re taken away from their parents why 

their parents let it happen, right? And so developmentally what it impacts in terms of 

a relationship is so hard. 

And, again, as we’ve always said, for child protection reasons there will be a number 

of children for whom that removal is necessary. But the families and the children that 

Together for Good are serving are those children where the risk of safety for that child 

is not one that warrants removal. And so that allows a child protection system to really 

work in a way that it can really think through: Is it best for the child to remain with 

this parent? Is there truly a safety issue? And work with those children where we very 

strongly and very surely have safety concerns, because we’ve not created unnecessary 

trauma and unnecessary removals of other children that could be served in a different 

way. 

And I think that’s what we’ve tried so much to talk about—foster care is traumatic. 

And a lot of these children have already suffered trauma. And we’re just continuing to 

exacerbate that. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

15 

And recognizing that we’re going to eventually reunify and create even more challenges has just allowed us to view that as a system we can’t continue to operate in this 

way. 

Ms. SANDBERG. And I would highly agree. I mean, there is an absolute necessary 

place for child protection to do its work. And our hope is that if we go upstream far 

enough, we catch it before it ever gets to that place. And at the end of the day, numbers 

are everything in this game. You can’t have too many children coming in that direction, 

because we’re already overloaded. Our families—foster families are overloaded themselves, and social workers are extremely stressed. So we’re trying to bear some of that 

burden upstream in terms of prevention. 

Ms. CALPIN. Well, and I’ll just—I think this is what we talk about—is every family, 

every child deserves a unique approach, right? And how do we best determine what that 

approach should be? And in a system where we’re able to really think and respond at different levels and different tiers, based on engaging with them earlier, I think that’s 

exciting. And you know, child protection in a system driven by courts and lawyers and 

judges. It’s intended to be one that really looks at a system differently than what you’re 

doing in terms of trying to engage with families in a supportive way. And the goal is to 

try to think about how we move our system to better work in both ways. 

Ms. PARKER. Ms. Foster, you mentioned in your presentation that Youth Villages does 

a high level of evaluation for what is working and what’s not working with the families 

in which you engage. How are you being connected with your families, first of all? Is it 

from a call to child protection services? Is it through schools? Is it in similar ways as to 

how Together for Good is connected with families? And then what are some of the overall 

statistics that you’re seeing, and how has it changed your approach? 

Ms. FOSTER. Youth Villages finds out or is connected with children primarily through 

child welfare agencies—a child welfare agency is receiving a call about a child being atrisk. And that agency typically does an initial investigation into the case and decides if 

it warrants a higher level of intervention. And then states contract with—or, counties— 

contract with Youth Villages, just like other community-based service providers. And if 

a child needs a high level of support and intervention that is beyond the kind of basic 

visitation that that public agency provides, they will contract with Youth Villages to provide services. 

So that’s typically how we’re working. But a child that is in the foster care system, 

we also provide services through mental health Medicaid system. We provide services to 

older youth aging out of care, and some of those other cases. Like, with older youth, they 

may self-refer into our services. So there’s some variety. But what I just described is typically how we’re finding out about a child. And in terms of—you mentioned how we track 

outcomes and how that’s impacted the work. 

Ms. PARKER. And what are some of your outcomes? 

Ms. FOSTER. So pretty early into Youth Villages’ history, we started collecting outcome data on, as I mentioned, at completion of services, as well as 6, 12, and 24 months 

post-completion of services delivered through us—where are the children? Are they at 

home with their family? Where are they living? Have they come back into care, whether 

it’s through us or the child welfare system sent them to some other placement? How 

stable are they? What has been their involvement, if any, with the criminal justice 

system? Some states have integrated child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Some 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

16 

states have separated. So it looks differently in different parts of the United States. And 

how are they doing in school? 

And so we—as well as a lot of additional data—we capture that data on all the children and families that we’re working with. And that gives us feedback on how are the 

services going? And when we initially made the transition from being dominantly a residential provider to being primarily in-home services providers, it’s because we found out 

that when we provide these intensive in-home services, that data looks a lot better. Kids 

are much more likely to be safely stable at home with their families 2 years after we 

worked with them than if we provided residential and then that was it, and they got 

reunited with their family without any sort of additional support. 

We also work with third party research organizations, for instance MDRC, that will 

look at not just the data of how children served by us are faring, but how they’re doing 

compared to a comparison group. So what the Family First Act requires in terms of 

prevention services is that services that receive Federal reimbursement have proven that 

they are effective compared to what else that child might get. And typically that requires 

a third-party research organization to be collecting that data, because we have the data 

on the kids we serve. We don’t have the data on the kids we don’t serve. The public 

agency has that data. 

So one other thing that I think is important to take away related to Family First 

Act and in general is that the public system, the child protective system, has a huge, 

robust amount of data on what services are being provided to kids, how those kids are 

doing, how they’re doing today, how they’re doing 2 years later. And there is a huge opportunity now to harness the power of that data for us to really know what is working and 

to compare different interventions to each other and how are kids doing 1, 2, 3 years down 

the line. And we have a lot of data as a country. We don’t always use that data to capture 

those insights of what’s really working. So we try to do it as best we can as an agency, 

and also work with our public agency partners to capture a fuller picture of the data 

about what works. 

Ms. PARKER. Well, this has been a tremendously encouraging conversation as we 

work through different models of how best to care for children, what is in their best 

interest. And what I’m hearing from the panelists is that if they can be kept with the 

family, that is the best interest. And we have some new best practices that we’ve developed here to make that possible when the families are safe for the children. 

Are there any closing remarks that any of the panelists would like to make? 

Ms. FOSTER. I’ll just mention—and I think this has been a theme today—but families 

really are the solution. I think, you know, in the United States back—people have been 

talking about orphanages and also talking about Norway and some other countries. And 

it’s very easy to pass judgment on other families as an outsider. And it’s very easy to pass 

judgment on other families when you are a government entity or a private service provider. But almost all parents love their children and want to do well by their children. 

And if they are given the resources, and the skills, and the training to raise children 

safely, that is what they want to do. 

And so finding a way to empower those families to do what they want to do anyway— 

and most kids want to be with their biological families. They don’t want to be taken away. 

They don’t want to be taken away, even if they’re experiencing abuse. And so how do we 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

17 

equip these families to do what they want to do anyway, instead of passing judgment on 

what’s happening and immediately traumatizing kids and parents by removing them. 

Ms. CALPIN. I would second that. And when we talk with youth in care, overwhelming when you ask them what you can do to help them, they would always say: You 

can help my mom. You know, you could have helped my mom. You could have served her 

differently. 

That’s why we’re all so excited about what Congress and the administration did with 

Family First, and why this really is a sea change for states and for communities in how 

they’ve served children and families. And working and really educating yourself on this 

opportunity and becoming involved in sort of supporting child welfare in this new direction is going to be so critical with that. 

Ms. SANDBERG. And I would echo as well that families are everything. We are created 

to need each other and created to be in relationship with each other. And my call would 

be to the public at large and the communities around the country to say, what is your 

part? Because this isn’t just a government solution. This isn’t a programmatic solution. 

It’s a good neighbor—like, how are we going to love our neighbors and come alongside 

them? This isn’t just for—families everywhere in crisis, not just the poor. And maybe this 

would do us all some good, to learn to love our neighbors better. 

Ms. PARKER. Thank you all so much for joining us today with your incredibly wellinformed insights. This briefing will be posted on the Helsinki Commission website in 

video form, and there’ll be a transcript up as well. Thank you so much for joining us 

today. [Applause.] 

[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the briefing ended.] 

Æ 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER

This is an official publication of the Commission on 

Security and Cooperation in Europe. 

★ ★ ★ 

This publication is intended to document 

developments and trends in participating 

States of the Organization for Security 

and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). 

★ ★ ★ 

All Commission publications may be freely reproduced, 

in any form, with appropriate credit. The Commission 

encourages the widest possible dissemination of its 

publications. 

★ ★ ★ 

www.csce.gov @HelsinkiComm 

The Commission’s Web site provides access 

to the latest press releases and reports, 

as well as hearings and briefings. Using the 

Commission’s electronic subscription service, readers are 

able to receive press releases, articles, and other 

materials by topic or countries of particular interest. 

Please subscribe today. 

CSCE18-11 with DISTILLER