This federal information memo outlines research, resources, and best practices regarding family time and describes the impact of both high and low quality family time. The memo gives examples of promising practices and detailed recommendations for all system actors on supporting and implementing quality family time. You can use the recommendations, excerpted below, to help design a quality representation program in your jurisdiction. Such recommendations can help you determine what data to look for regarding the role of attorneys in advocating for family time, what trainings to offer regarding the definitions and impact of family time on youth, and what outcomes to measure regarding the effect of quality legal representation on family time.
Excerpt: “Recommendations for Attorneys of Parents, Children, Youth, and the Child Welfare Agency
- Remain cognizant that parent-child separation, even when necessary or for short time periods, causes trauma to children and parents.
- Help locate and involve relatives or kin supportive of parent child contact when removal is necessary.
- Advocate for parent-child contact as soon as possible after removal to help mitigate child trauma and ambiguity of loss.
- Be creative in recommendations of where, when, and how initial contact and ongoing family time occur.
- Ensure substantive discussion of family time occurs in every hearing or review where a child is in out-of-home care.
- Advocate for sibling time where siblings are in separate placements.
- Know the factors that can make family time logistically and emotionally challenging for parents and children, anticipate needs, and identify resources to mitigate those challenges.
- Contest unnecessary supervision of family time.”