DAI is particularly pleased and honored to profile one of our own. Susan Notkin is President of DAI’s Board of Directors, bringing us wisdom and expertise from a lifetime in child welfare.
Susan is Associate Director at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) where she manages their work in child welfare systems reform. In this capacity she advances CSSP’s role in promoting responsive, progressive public policies for children and families involved in the child welfare system. She leads CSSP’s Youth Thrive, a multi-year national initiative, which works to promote the healthy well-being and development for all youth, with a particular focus on youth in foster care. Prior to joining CSSP, Susan was the Director of the Children’s Program and of the Homeless Families Program at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. During her 17 years with the Clark Foundation, she created and implemented a ten-year $50 million grant-making program that pioneered public/private efforts focused on preventing and reducing child maltreatment through reforming the child welfare system. Previously, she designed the New York City Child Protective Services Training Academy and held positions in the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, where she represented the rights of clients residing in mental health institutions, and directed the state’s policy agenda in child abuse prevention, child protection, early care and education and domestic violence. Notkin is a recipient of the LEAD! Award from Women and Philanthropy for her work to improve the child welfare system and combat domestic violence.
What inspired you to dedicate your career to improving child welfare? ?
I have worked on a wide range of social reform issues for almost 40 years. In 1980 I was working for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, overseeing the State’s child protection and child abuse and neglect prevention programs. The more I looked at the research and talked to workers, parents, advocates and children, the more I was convinced that a family’s ability to nurture their children was at the heart of preventing most of the social problems we face as a nation. And the more I learned the more I perceived that most families want to be good parents and have high aspirations for their children and that the State was no substitute for a family. Children need to be raised by families–ideally their own biological family but where that was not possible they need to be connected to a life-long family either through adoption or guardianship. Working to make that happen has defined the work that I do.
Tell us little about CSSP and how foster care adoption fits into its reform agenda.
The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) is a nonprofit public policy, research and technical assistance organization. We work with state and federal policymakers and with communities across the country. Our mission is to create new ideas and promote public policies that produce equal opportunities and better futures for all children and families, especially those most often left behind. CSSP’s work includes promoting public policies that strengthen vulnerable families; reforming child welfare and other public systems, mobilizing a national network to prevent child abuse and promote optimal development for young children; assisting neighborhoods with the tools needed to help parents and their children succeed; and educating residents to be effective consumers.
Much of our system reform work focuses on improving how public child welfare systems and its partners address the safety, permanency and well-being needs of the children, youth and families that they serve. As an organization, our focus is on ensuring that families receive the help they need in their communities so that they never need to come to the attention of the child welfare system in the first place. When children do need the State to step in to ensure their safety, we promote policy and practice changes to ensure that families are helped to reunify quickly with their children whenever possible. When that is not possible best practice suggests that children should be placed with relatives through kinship care. Only when that is not possible should children be placed in foster care with non-family members. And no child should grow up in foster care or exit care on their own without a family to call his or her own. That’s where adoption comes in. Adoption from foster care represents the biggest mode of adoption in this country. Notwithstanding this fact, too many children in foster care are in need of adoptive families. And too many youth end up exiting from foster care to independence without family permanence.
One of your major interests is children aging out of foster care. How serious is this problem?
Each year almost 30,000 youth exit from foster care without a permanent family. The outcomes for these young people are dire: higher rates of homelessness, criminal justice involvement, teen age pregnancy, and lack of an education and skills to meet their financial needs. This isn’t surprising. Just imagine any 18 or 21 year old–even youth who have had all kinds of advantages– being on their own without a family to rely on for advice, comfort or support. Succeeding without family support would be difficult for any young person. I firmly believe that we have a moral responsibility to these young people to ensure that they have the relationships and opportunities that all youth need in order to thrive—and the number one thing that the research says youth need is a lifelong caring adult in their lives.
What can be done to help these children and young adults?
The first thing we need to do is to ensure that no child spends their childhood in foster care and that no youth exists foster care without a family. All efforts should be made to help strengthen families to care for their children. And for those children who need to come into foster care all efforts should be made to reunify the child with his/her family. States need to offer subsidized guardianship programs for families who are taking care of their relatives. But when reunification is not going to be possible we need to move towards some kind of legal or relational permanency for the child. In many of those situations, birth parents can often play a role in preparing the child for a new permanent family. For older children and youth, we need to explore whether it would be better for them to stay connected in some way to their family of origin. Too often we set up youth to reject adoption as an option because they see it as a rejection of their family. This is where open adoption needs to become a real option for youth. We also have to stop accepting a youth’s rejection of adoption as definitive. Workers need to keep returning to this option. Sometimes the way we ask a question dictates the answers we get. So instead of asking youth whether they want to be adopted workers need to ask: Would you like someone to celebrate your birthday? To support you through your triumphs and challenges? To be with you at high school graduation? To be there during times of need? And we need to ask these questions over time so that youth have the time to consider their options and understand the possibilities that adoption presents.
What are the impediments to adoption out of the foster care system?
There are many barriers to adoption out of the foster care system. Some states preclude LGBTQ people from adopting which significantly restricts the pool of adoptive families. In fact LGBTQ individuals are more likely to adopt a child from foster care than others . Another barrier is that many prospective parents always imagined adopting a baby and they may not even have considered adopting a 5 year old or an 18 year old. Families are often hesitant to adopt a child who may have suffered from abuse and neglect and who has spent multiple years in foster care. They may understandably worry about the impact of these experiences on the child’s development and life chances. And, unfortunately, few states provide adoptive families with the physical and mental health supports that these children and their adoptive families may need. That’s why post-adoption services are so necessary. Finally, many child welfare systems haven’t figured out how to balance the fact that while we don’t want courts to create legal orphans we also don’t want children to wait unnecessarily long when an adoptive home is available and when reunification is not possible. That’s where court reform plays a role. Courts need to aggressively and more intentionally pair services to the individual needs of families to give them the best chance at reunification, and when that is not possible, to move swiftly to another permanency option.
If you could change one thing about the practice of foster care adoption what would it be?
I would make openness in adoption an option that is more often considered, implemented and enforceable. And that means ensuring that children’s ties to siblings and other family members are protected and maintained.
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