Concurrent planning: benefits and pitfalls.

Concurrent planning-working with families toward reunification while developing alternative permanency plans-was designed to fit an out-of-home care population much like that projected for the year 2000 and beyond: very young, chronically neglected children from multiproblem families. As large-scale programs begin to develop nationally, those implementing concurrent planning must be aware of the pitfalls that can undercut its effectiveness, while keeping in mind the benefits it can bring by reducing the trauma experienced by children in placement. Concurrent planning: To work towards family reunification while, at the sane time, developing an alternative permanent plan. [Katz et al. 1994] As the child welfare field prepares for the new millennium, it is timely to consider ways in which practice might be adapted to better serve children in placement in the future. Concern over the growing national foster care census and continuing dissatisfaction among social work professionals and government leaders with efforts to improve outcomes for children in care add further impetus to such efforts. Additional support is found in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) (P.L. 105-89), which reduces from 18 to 12 months the scheduling of the permanency hearing, defines parental conduct that obviates the need for reunification efforts, and cites concurrent planning as an appropriate practice. Concurrent planning, pioneered in Washington State in the early 1980s, was specifically designed for the population expected to be in out-of-home care after the year 2000: the very young child whose family's chronic pathology (often drug/ alcohol related) has left the child drifting in out-of-home care [Katz & Robinson 1991]. The concurrent planning model addresses this difficult-to-treat family constellation by combining vigorous family outreach, expedited timelines, and potentially permanent family foster care placements to improve the odds of timely permanency for young children. Roots of the Model Between 1959 and 1979, a number of clinicians and researchers published seminal works on the existence of foster care drift and suggested solutions. Heymann and her colleagues in Chicago produced two reports that led directly to the present model, suggesting that an agency's focus on permanency from intake and a diagnostic use of parental visiting patterns could greatly reduce drift and facilitate earlier permanency [Epstein & Heymann 1967; Chestang & Heymann 1973]. This clinical perspective fit well with the overwhelming statistical evidence showing the scope of foster care drift between 1950 and 1980, the extraordinary length of time needed to effect an adoption for a child in out-of-home care, the diminishing options for those children still in care after one year, the particularly slow process of case resolution for infants entering care, and the efficacy of court review in speeding case movement [Maas & Engler 1959; Festinger 1976; Fanshel 1978, 1979]. During this fertile period in child welfare's evolution, attachment theorists entered into the out-of-home care field, spotlighting the psychic damage caused by repeated placements, which were endemic to the system [Littner 1972; Bowlby 1979]. Their theories caused a tidal wave of controversy when presented as a basis for redesigning the way courts handle children's cases (e.g., the proposal that case movement be determined by "the child's sense of time," rather than adult and organizational considerations [Goldstein et al. 1973]). In a related development, placement agencies began to report on their efforts to create a hybrid program, called foster/ adoption, that would benefit children in care who were unlikely to return home [Gill 1975; Gill & Amadio 1983; Mica & Vosler 1990]. Although many positive outcomes were described, the concept had its critics, who were concerned with possible inherent ethical dilemmas [Lee & Hull 1983]. …