Company’s Description
Provide a description of your organization including how you help the community and the environment. (1,500 character limit) Spaulding for Children mission is to build families and assist them on their journey through placement, training and long-term nurturing and assistance. We provide this through three entities:
- Child and Family Services
- The Spaulding Institute for Family and Community Development
- The Academy for Family Support and Preservation
Over the years, we’ve built a reputation as a nationally recognized authority on adoption. Our agency has provided training and consultation to professionals throughout the nation and in England, Scotland, South Africa and Canada.
Strengthening families and fostering the healthy development of children are the goals of Child and Family Services, the direct service division of Spaulding for Children. With services ranging from prevention to adoption, this unit provides for the safety, permanence and well-being of children through the following programs:
Resource Home Development – Spaulding recruits, educates and licenses adults who have room in their homes and their hearts for a child.
Foster Care – Spaulding provides foster care placements for children who have been abused and neglected, along with the services needed to facilitate permanency for these children at the earliest possible date.
Adoption – Spaulding matches children, ages 0-18, who need a permanent home with families willing to make lifelong commitments. After matches are made, Spaulding facilitates the adoption process, including associated legal paperwork.
Healthy Families Resource Center – The Center focuses on the prevention of abuse and neglect by providing home and community-based services. Composed of both a short-term and a long-term program, the Center has succeeded in preventing out-of-home placement for 99% of the families it has served.
The Spaulding Institute for Family and Community Development (SI) has been a division of Spaulding for Children since 2001. Its primary goal is to develop resource materials and community-based services that enhance the ability of individuals, agencies and communities to support and to strengthen children and families. The Institute accomplishes this by developing innovative partner-ships and collaborations, by designing products that respond to the unique needs of individuals and diverse communities, and by using creative online and in-person approaches to the development of curricula and training programs.
The Institute has been the site of numerous national, regional and statewide projects and grant-funded programs. In 2014, these programs focused on adoption and child welfare, including:
- pre and post adoption
- safe haven/delivery legislation
- adoption preparation for children and families
- recruitment and support of foster, kinship and adoptive parents
- family team development
- curriculum and training development
Over the years, Spaulding for Children has built a reputation as a nationally recognized authority on adoption. The Academy for Family Support and Preservation is a new division established in 2014 at Spaulding. It blends the foundational work being conducted through our direct service division, Child and Family Services, with information about the latest adoption policies, practices and research findings.
The Academy’s philosophy is that permanency planning starts the moment that children enter care. To meet children’s needs successfully and to ensure their well-being and stability, child welfare systems need to rethink the continuum of care they provide from entry all the way through post-permanency. The Academy at Spaulding is set up to work with public and private, grant-funded programs that increase and enhance permanency support and preservation programs in states across the nation.
The Academy has two programs:
In October 2014, Spaulding was awarded the five-year, cooperative agreement for the national Quality Improvement Center for Adoption/Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG) by the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We are partnering with The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in this initiative. The QIC-AG will develop a multifaceted system of services and interventions that support the permanency and stability of children who are moving toward or already have obtained adoption or guardianship.
The QIC-AG was founded on the premise that child welfare agencies need to provide a continuum of services that will increase permanency stability, beginning when children first enter the child welfare system and continuing after adoption or guardianship has been finalized. Primary goal of the QIC-AG is to develop evidence-based models of support and intervention that can be replicated or adapted by other child welfare systems across the country. The aim of these models is to achieve long-term, stable permanency in adoptive and guardianship homes. These models will address issues that arise for children and families before and after placement and finalization.
The QIC-AG will work in partnership with six to eight sites (state, county or tribal child welfare systems) to develop system capacity to achieve the outcomes of promoting and supporting adoption and guardianship. Expected long-term outcomes include
- increased post-permanency stability
- improved behavioral health for children
- improved child and family well-being
In 2014, Spaulding for Children received a sub-award from ICF International as part of that organization’s cooperative agreement to establish the National Capacity Building Center for Public Child Welfare Agencies. Through this sub-award, Spaulding has a contractual employee, Christine Feldman, who is considered a national expert on adoption. Christine will provide technical assistance on adoption and guardianship to states across the nation.
The needs of Michigan children are greater today than when we began in 1968. But one thing remains constant: every child deserves a loving family. And, Spaulding for Children is as committed to serving children and creating families as we were the day we started our journey in Chelsea.
