What is Family Preservation and Why Does it Matter?

Abstract

This paper presents the competing ideas, values and perceptions that have led to different understandings of family preservation services (FPS). It is a challenge to gauge FPSs fit within the child welfare system among the basic functions of child welfare: protective services, foster care, and adoption. While many commentators speak of the child welfare con- tinuum, this vision has not been fully realized in most communities. The depth and breadth of FPS varies greatly among jurisdictions, ranging from being marginal to being integral in a social service network spanning var- ied target populations, including juvenile justice and mental health clients. The basic model of FPS can be traced to the 1950s, but the roots of the controversy over FPS go back much furtherto the turn of the cen- tury beginnings of the profession. FPS highlights the tension between two approaches to social services, one stressing a community-focused approach, based on the settlement movement, and one focused on individual and family adjustment. Both approaches were rooted in the charities and cor- rections movements, which envisioned a productive combination of moral- ity and science. Many of the most passionate arguments about family preservation are about what to do when the twin poles of science (research) and morality (belief) are not in alignment. Social workers also struggle with a professional heritage of the friendly visitor who felt that it was her duty to judge the moral worth of poor parents, a legacy that complicates issues of race, ethnicity, and class. FPS was attractive to the field in large part because it matched a movement toward community-based care and provided a solution to chron- ic issues of underfunding. In many ways it was a reconceptualization of old strategies through the use of new theories and knowledge, including crisis theory, family systems theory, social learning, behavioral and cog- nitive theories, and the ecological perspective. But these theories, while not mutually exclusive, also created tensions of their own as they sug- gest different manifestations of FPS. Three child development theories enrich the theoretical and conceptual bases of FPS: the transactional approach to child development, attachment theory, and resiliency theory. The underlying dilemma is that referral to child protection is some- times the only service available for families beginning to face problems, if not a last resort. The field should look beyond narrow definitions of family preservation service models to the philosophical issues at stake and focus on the policy changes and technical advances that must be made in order to develop a broad range of effective family- and community-cen- tered services. Such an examination can help to guide the next generation of reforms. Such reforms should emphasize supporting families and improving community development. This paper also appears in Family Preservation Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2 (2001), pp. 124. July