She is one of thousands who have benefited from what’s come to be known as the family-preservation movement, whose aim is to keep parents and children together. Fourteen states are making a serious commitment to it, and the number of families involved is growing rapidly. In the past three years, in just eight states, an estimated 20,000 have participated. Research indicates that children usually do better if they can remain with their own families. But since the mid-19808, when crack cocaine arrived and more and more kids fell into poverty, the number of children living apart from their families has risen. Last year, an estimated 600,000 were in foster care or in institutions; by the end of the decade, there may be almost 1 million. Placements cost taxpayers $9.1 billion in 1991. The cost to kids was incalculable.
Two child psychologists in Tacoma, Wash., devised the first family-preservation program, Homebuilders, which is the movement’s model. Family preservationists are taking a radical approach. Committed to the idea that even deeply troubled families can change, they are using intense, shortterm intervention to remove the risk, not the child. With clients, they’re devising ways to keep “suitcase kids”-Children so close to being taken away that their suitcases are already packed-safely at home. And they’re succeeding: one year after intervention ends, an estimated 80 percent of families are still together. Darrylin Dickson, who lives in Detroit with her five children, grandchild and boyfriend, has become a spokesperson for the movement. She has stayed straight for three years. Instead of selling and using crack, she speaks to various groups about the program that saved her family.
Traditional social workers carry anywhere from a dozen to 90 cases, which may stay open indefinitely. They meet clients briefly and infrequently in their offices, and they, not the family, devise solutions to problems. Family-preservation social workers, on the other hand, have only two or three cases at a time, and work with each for only four to six weeks. They deal exclusively with families who are at imminent risk of losing their children. Available around the clock, they meet clients at home for as many as 20 hours a week. “It’s difficult for families to hide stuff when I’m in their homes,” says Susan Hardie, a social worker in New Mexico. “When I’m in the office, I can only hope and pray that they’re describing the situation accurately.”
Family preservation is a hands-on partnership: social workers do everything from helping install new plumbing and making charts for children’s chores to teaching families how to manage anger. In many cases, one small change can help turn a family around, and social workers can draw on special funds to assist them. They might pay for a septic tank or buy car tires so a parent can get to work. And they don’t focus on a family’s weaknesses. “Even vulnerable families have tremendous strengths,” says Susan Kelly, director of Michigan’s Families First program. " We build on strengths." The family, not the social worker, chooses what steps to take to improve their situation. Sandra Irving, a St. Louis mother who was abusing drugs, says her social worker “helped me realize I had choices. She didn’t particularly like what I did, but she liked me.”
Family preservation is voluntary, and occasionally a prospective family will not go along. Most, however, grab at the chance. “You have a teachable moment,” says Gary Stangler, director of the Missouri Department of Social Services, “a moment of crisis when parents realize they’ve got to change. Fundamentally … parents do want the best for their kids, and you just have to build on that.” Elaine, a Native American, and Mike, her Hispanic boyfriend, did. They were heavy drinkers, and nearly lost their two kids, until a social worker in New Mexico urged them to consider AA. Both have been sober for more than two months. “It was a swift kick in the butt to get us back to reality,” says Mike, “and it worked.”
Family preservation can be extremely cost-effective. In Alabama, for example, the program runs about $2,800 per family. The cost of keeping just one child in foster care for 35 months (the state average) is $7,400. Critics say that no one can accurately predict how many children would actually have been taken away without intervention, and family preservationists don’t deny it. Still, between 1988 and 1990, Michigan counties that had no family-preservation program registered a 28 percent rise in new foster-care placements; counties with one saw a 10 percent decline.
Not even the staunchest supporter, however, argues that family preservation is a cure-all, or that it is applicable in all cases, especially those involving severe abuse. “Lots of these family-life patterns and habits have been developed over generations,” says Steven Ziebell of Children and Families of Iowa, a not-for-profit agency in Des Moines. “They’re not going to change real rapidly over six weeks.” Missouri’s Stangler estimates that the program can be used with only one of three families in crisis. Family preservationists see their program as one of many options, and some think it needs to be even more flexible.
But in a line of work with too few happy endings, it is a particularly gratifying option. " You sleep easy at night," says Bruce Singletary. “You have good dreams.” And so, perhaps, will the kids who are able to unpack their suitcases and stay at home.
