Reunification

Reunification is the safe return of a child to the care of one or both parents after a period of being placed in care. It is a planned and timely process (Department of Health and Human Services (a)) which pays attention to strong partnerships, thoughtful planning and considered practice to ensure reunification is sustainable and long-lasting.

For a child on custody or short-term guardianship child protection orders or placed away from home on a child protection care agreement, the case plan will usually have reunification to parents as the primary permanency goal. This reflects the order of preference for progressing permanency, as outlined in the Child Protection Act 1999, section 5BA.

Working towards reunification 

When a child is reunified with a parent, it often means they are also reuniting with a broader family network, including siblings who may not be in care, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and others who are significant to them.

Consider these guiding points from the Child Protection Act 1999 when working with a family towards reunification:

• The safety, wellbeing and best interests of a child, both through childhood and for the rest of the child’s life, are paramount.
• The preferred permanency arrangement for a child is to live with their family.
• If a child is removed from their family, support the child and their family to enable the child to return to their care if it is in the child’s best interests.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families have the right to self-determination.

The five elements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle (prevention, partnership, participation, placement and connection) must apply at all stages of the intervention.
How to safely reunify a child to the care of their parents after they have experienced abuse and neglect presents several considerations for practitioners to balance.

For example:

• There may be risks associated with returning a child to a home where they were unsafe… on the other hand, not being with their family also carries risk.
• A child requires timely decisions….on the other hand, supporting families to make genuine, long-lasting changes to entrenched difficulties takes a long time.
• Regular, safe and meaningful family contact is essential when working towards reunification…on the other hand, contact can remind a child of the abuse they have experienced and exacerbate current difficulties they may be facing (Jackson and McConachy).

These considerations reinforce that it is not just the complex decisions around reunification that require thought and consideration, but how these decisions are implemented (Jackson and McConachy). 
Reunification is the process of working with one or both parents, to safely return a child to their care. It is widely accepted that for most children, their needs for safety, belonging and wellbeing are best met by their family, at home. By partnering with families using strengths based, solution focused case work, involving support services and an informed support network, practitioners can support families to resolve or mitigate the risk of significant harm that resulted in their child entering care enabling timely and sustainable reunification.

The reunification of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children must be considered sensitively and in the context of colonisation and the Stolen Generations to understand the hurt that has been experienced by the removal of children from their families (SNAICC (b)). 

The principles of early planning, partnering with families and timely decision making for reunification apply, and planning must also include culturally safe supports and relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services to provide the right help to enable parents to safely care for their children (Partnership element of the Child Placement Principle). 

The primary services funded to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families are Family Wellbeing Services and Family Participation Programs.  Family Wellbeing Services provide intervention to address child protection worries and Family Participation Programs provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family led decision making to help with engaging the whole family in planning and decision making.

Bringing a child and their family back together safely is the primary task of practitioners, and a process that requires intentional planning. It can also be resource and time intensive and parents need to demonstrate their capacity and capability to maintain the necessary positive changes to meet the child’s safety, belonging and wellbeing needs over a period of time. 

As well as being complex, reunification can also present a dilemma for practitioners who have a heightened awareness of the consequences of their decisions. It is hard to return a child to a home where they have experienced harm and trauma, which may still carry inherent risk and uncertainty, even with robust safety planning. Planning for reunification is important and will be strengthened by working closely with families towards this goal, from day 1 of a child coming into care.

Case planning for reunification requires practitioners to have a thorough understanding of a child and family’s situation, including where they have been, where they are now and where they want to be.

Some of the complex and competing considerations to consider when planning for reunification include:

• assessment of previous and current risks
• the vulnerability and needs of the child
• parental strengths, needs and capacity to change
• the child’s views and wishes
• family context and functioning
• culture
• the relationship between the parent and child
• length of time in care
• siblings
• relationships with carers and support workers
• safety and support networks and ensuring the members of these networks know everything about the family and their situation and have a demonstrated ability to taken action, if necessary.

Concurrent case planning is essential to progress early permanency outcomes for children. As well as focusing on reunification as the primary permanency goal when developing an initial case plan with a child and family, practitioners are required to simultaneously establish an alternative permanency goal (or goals) for the child just in case reunification is not possible. 

Timely and robust decision making around reunification significantly influences being able to establish stability for a child and reduces the likelihood of placement breakdowns and multiple care arrangements. (Refer to Concurrent case planning.)

Use a developmental lens

Knowledge and understanding of child development can provide a lens through which to see reunification and decisions around this, through the eyes of the child.

Understand the impact of trauma

Trauma informed practice is essential to shape interventions with a child and their parents. Trauma refers to the response to an event, rather than the event itself (Jackson and McConachy). Paying attention to these responses can provide insight into what has happened in the past and how it influences behaviour and reactions now.

Understanding past trauma is particularly important when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. The First Nation population have experienced cumulative and collective trauma over multiple generations (Child Welfare Information Gateway (d)) due to the systematic removal of children from their families, which continues to have a profound impact on people today.

As well as the trauma experienced by the child because of the abuse that has made it necessary for them to be brought into care, it is also important to acknowledge that many parents have their own history of abuse and childhood trauma. The accumulation of the trauma associated with this can significantly influence how a person parents and can impact on the progress of reunification.

What is traumatic to one person may not be for another. Use a curious approach to build understanding about behaviour and responses to avoid misinterpreting a traumatic stress response as resistance (NCCD Children’s Research Centre). 

To work towards reunification, it is important to help a family shift from a space overwhelmed by trauma, crisis, oppression and loss to one of support, recovery and hope.

Reunification is more than returning a child home

Reunification is not just the return of a child to the care of their parents. It is a process along a continuum of service delivery. It includes maintaining family relationships, important connections and routines while a child is in short-term care, responsive case planning and ongoing support after the child returns home (Department of Health and Human Services (a)). As the preferred permanency option, reunification requires careful consideration and decisive action from the point a child first enters care.

Reunifying a child with his or her birth parents is not a one-time event. Rather, it is a process involving the reintegration of the child into a family environment that may have changed significantly from the environment the child left. (Wulczyn)

The process of reunification involves strong and meaningful family engagement, comprehensive assessment, demonstrated and sustained positive change, attention to developing a strong safety and support network and ensuring appropriate support services are in place.

Quality contact

The quality of contact or family time between a child and their parent is an essential tool when making decisions around reunification. Observing the content as well as the nature of interactions during family time can provide practitioners with valuable insight into what things might be like for a child if they return home. It is important to be aware of what the relationship is like at the time of the child’s removal so any changes can be monitored during the period of separation (Department of Health and Human Services (b)).

The role of carers

Carers play a significant role as partners in reunification due to their close connection and knowledge of the child (Department of Health and Human Services (a)). Think about the physical permanency a carer provides for example a home, transport to school, and support in attending medical appointments. 

Carers are also a big part of relational permanency and this can help with hearing the voice of the child about what is happening. A child builds a relationship with the carer even when they are placed in their care for a short period of time. When a child leaves a care arrangement, consider how to maintain this connection and support ongoing relational permanency.

When the primary goal is reunification, consider how carers can support and be part of the long-term safety and support plan. If long-term care becomes the primary goal, consider how carers are partnering with a child’s parents or family to achieve permanency together. Be mindful that not all carers are suited to this level of support and may need help to shift from a place of rescue. Their journey is different, and transparency about plans for reunification at the outset will help to determine how involved the carers are willing and able to be. It is important to ensure foster care agencies are involved to support carers as they considering their contributions to this part of service delivery.

When supporting reunification, carers can act as mentors to parents and play an ongoing role in their life post-reunification (Child Welfare Information Gateway (a)). ‘Icebreaker meetings’ can be an effective tool in connecting parents with carers to find common ground and ensure the wellbeing of the child remains central. It is also a way to ensure parents retain their role and engage them as true partners in decision making about their child, including those focused on reunification. An encouraging relationship between parents and carers can support a child to feel safe as they transition from a care arrangement to home.

Comprehensive assessment

Early assessment is necessary to inform plans to progress both the primary and alternative permanency goals. Strong engagement with a family enables practitioners to comprehensively assess their strengths, needs and capacity to work towards reunification as the most desirable permanency outcome. 

Consider within the assessment the worries (safety issues and risks) when a child came into care, if there are any new worries, the child’s history as well as the history of the parents, to understand what things look like now and what needs to change. 

• Are things still happening which means planning for reunification cannot be progressed? 
• Have there been any previous attempts at reunification with this child or any other children in the family? 
• Have any of these attempts been successful? 

These considerations are central to the assessment to understand what has, or has not, worked in the past.

As parental capacity and capability are key components of all reunification assessments, it is important to explore:

• the ability of the parents to care either together or separately
• the capabilities of the abusing parent and the potentially protective parent when the child has experienced significant harm
• a parent’s capacity to change within the child’s timeframe capacity of each parent to prioritise and provide for the child’s needs. (Farmer), (Department of Health and Human Services (a))

The assessments that begin on day 1 must reflect the individual needs of the child and family to develop a clear understanding of their circumstances, environment and potential (Child Welfare Information Gateway (a)). These early connections to gather information play an important part in informing the case plan goals that will either lead to reunification or the implementation of an alternative long-term care arrangement.

Strong safety and support network

A core component of a strengths-based, practice approach is the development and strengthening of a child, young person or family’s safety and support network. (Refer to Safety and support networks and high intensity responses.) They are vital to promote and maintain safety, belonging and wellbeing for a child, both during and beyond formal Child Safety involvement. When working towards reunification, a strong safety and support network can create containment for parents and keep them focused on making the changes necessary to ensure home is safe for their child.

Networks are not static and as an intervention progresses, notice when relationships change. Support a child and their parents to build their network so as many supportive people as possible can help achieve the goals set out in the case plan. A safety plan which does not include a network is unlikely to be effective in keeping a child safe.

Support services

Establishing links with services that respond to identified needs and are intensive enough to help parents make and maintain the changes needed to support reunification can significantly influence permanency outcomes (Farmer). 

Services also need to be culturally appropriate to ensure decision making for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children accounts for the unique challenges faced by these families. Coordinated services must form part of the network surrounding the family that can be remain involved once a child returns home, to maximise the potential for sustained reunification.