We have launched our Family Finding Search Services!Download a sample contract template that you can use or incorporate into your contract click here
If you have established an account, submit a search request through a secure link click here
Family Finding job descriptions for your reference can be found here The California Permanency for Youth Project (CPYP) and Seneca’s Center for Family Finding and Youth Connectedness (CFFYC, founded by Kevin Campbell) have merged and forged a new identity as the National Institute for Permanent Family Connectedness (NIPFC). This venture was made possible by a bridge grant from the Stuart Foundation to Seneca, to bring together the best of what each operation delivered and learned. (For more history on what preceded this merger, click here).
NIPFC is rooted in its commitment to the belief that:
- Every child needs and deserves a safe and loving family; Family is the most normative and healing environment to raise children
- Current Child Welfare practice does not consistently ensure that children/youth are provided the benefit of a loving family, and research clearly demonstrates this failure endangers the lives of young adults and their subsequent children
- Children and youth in foster care need consistent connectedness to loved ones during their stay in care
- Entry, lengths of stay and placement changes in foster care can be significantly reduced by energizing a lifetime network of loving family inclusive of a primary parenting relationship
- Permanency and safety issues can be addressed and pursued with the same urgency, and doing so will yield greater well being for children, youth and families
- Practice knowledge and skill exists (albeit in pockets of promising practices) to provide a loving lifetime family network for every youth in the foster care system.
- Child welfare organizations must continuously evaluate its results and learn of its staff and trainers, as well as all those involved in child welfare is necessary to improve the results of our efforts for children, youth and families
- The public child welfare system alone cannot create the paradigm shift necessary to ensure that every child/youth exit with a lifetime family network. Vibrant collaboration among committed stakeholders with shared accountability is required to achieve better results for families.
- We can assist you to increase your compliance with state and federal legislative changes that point to increased connectedness/permanence with family.
NIPFC can provide child welfare agencies, court systems and community partners with training and coaching on a number of permanency topics, ranging from targeted trainings focused on reinvigorating and sustaining learned practices to inspiring and improving practice to meet the challenges presented in order to achieve permanency for all who are served.
We encourage and assist in building a working/learning collaborative within a court system community. Partnerships and networks are also necessary to promote alignment and teamwork between these organizations so your mission can be achieved.
We not only assist you with building the capacity to find and engage families, we can provide instruction and guidance that will enable you to attend to the loss and grief work necessary to assist children, youth and families to engage in cooperative, long lasting, healthy relationships.
We can provide specialized training on engaging underserved such as fathers, paternal relatives and other important connections. We can help you incorporate connections strategies to address disproportionality and disparity in your site.
We can work directly with supervisors to enhance their ability to effectively manage and supervise the work. We can also assist ventures to align and improve policy, procedure and protocol, as well as attending to permanency obstacles, to yield better and more consistent results for all families.
At NIPFC we are dedicated to providing a streamlined approach to the training needs of each site. We can partner with currently running project or co-sponsor trainings with these partner agencies. The goal is to connect trainings so there is a fluid overall approach to your overarching permanency goals, inclusive of Court Improvement Projects, Blue Ribbon Commissions and Model Courts*
To discuss how we might assist and further your permanency efforts, please contact us. We look forward to collaborating with you so that the children youth and families you serve receive what they need to live happy, healthy and productive lives.
*Model Court is a term designated by NCJFCJ, although jurisdictions can implement Model Court promising practices without formal NCJFCJ designation.
