In Youth Service, Inc. Success Stories, we aim to recognize clients who have overcome their hardships to find success through our programming. In this post, we are highlighting our Family Reunification program. FR promotes timely family reunification for youth ages 12-17 entering out-of-home placement for the first time due to well-being issues, such as parent/child conflict, truancy, domestic violence, behavioral health, etc. The goal is to reunify the youth and family within six months of placement. FR service coordinators navigate and advocate for the youth and families to receive appropriate services from community-based providers.
The FR Team was successful in reunifying a 15 year old female with her family. Through the Family Reunification service the family is now able to intentionally create a resilience by building patterns against stress activators. The youth entered foster care due to a parent child conflict. The parent was having problems accepting her child’s sexual orientation and often that erupted into an explosive situation. The youth believed that her mother did not care for her because her sexual orientation. The FR team connected the caregiver with LGBTQ classes that created awareness and taught ways she could support her child and provided school support for credit recovery. Also, the FR team coached and linked the caregiver to employment services, prepped both the child and parent for court, assisted the family with concrete goods (beds/ bedding, fans and food resources) and enrolled the family in Functional Family Therapy. Per the functional family therapist the family is doing well and utilized the therapy to its fullest capacity. The family reunified and received family reunification aftercare services. Their family unit has stronger communication skills and bonded immensely. They developed tools to prevent issues that brought them to family reunification services from breaking down the family unit in the future. The youth in the household were doing well in school and the parent has been successful in maintaining her employment. The family received family reunification and aftercare services for six months.