California Partners for Permanency (CAPP) was part of the federal Permanency Innovations Initiative, a 5-year, $100 million initiative of the Children’s Bureau underway between 2010 and 2016. In developing and implementing an innovation to reduce the number of children in long-term foster care, CAPP developed the Child and Family Practice Model and established new norms in partnering with the community to lift up and address institutional racism and trauma in public child welfare.

As the CAPP project was initiated in 2010, data provided a telling overview of the disproportionate impact on African American and American Indian children being served by the child welfare system in California:

• More than half (54 percent) of African American children had been in care for more than two years, and sadly, more than 30 percent had been in care for more than five years.
• Nearly half (45 percent) of American Indian children had been in care for more than two years.

Analyses of local child welfare systems were conducted to better understand the barriers to permanency and to inform solutions to reduce long term foster care. As a result of this research and data, four public child welfare agencies and their community, Tribal, and agency partners developed the Child and Family Practice Model as an integrated model that informs and shifts both child welfare practice and systems in order to address disparities in outcomes for children, youth, and families being served.

Community and Tribal partnerships have been at the core of the CAPP approach. Each county identified community partners based on the populations of children that were at greatest risk of disparate outcomes in their system. Humboldt County partnered with American Indian Tribes in its region; the two participating Los Angeles Offices and Santa Clara County partnered with their African American communities; and Fresno County partnered with both African American and American Indian communities. Community and Tribal partners brought unique perspectives to practice model development, helping to define child and family practice not by what social workers and families are mandated to do, but by what children and families need to experience to help them attend to their safety, permanency, and well-being needs. Since early in CAPP, community and Tribal partners have been continuously involved and are considered essential in Child and Family Practice Model implementation, evaluation, and in guiding ongoing practice and system changes to achieve improved child and family outcomes.

California Partners for permanency was funded by the Children’s Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under grant number 90-CT-0153.