ABSTRACT
Child welfare services have long intended to support children’s safety and well-being in their families and, short of that, to pursue brief, therapeutic, and cost-effective out-of-home care for the children. The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) of 1980 (P.L. 96–272) embodies those intentions and focuses services on safely maintaining abused and neglected children in their birth families whenever possible in preference to out-of-home placement. The Act (1) encourages the use of home-based placement prevention services; (2) mandates reporting mechanisms intended to monitor the course of children in foster care and force agencies to plan more effectively for the future of foster children; (3) limits the extent of placement in nonpermanent substitute care placements; and (4) describes specific protection for parents of children in substitute care (such as allowing parental participation in treatment planning, and placement of children in close proximity to their parents’ home). Permanency planning, the underlying philosophy behind the AACWA, assumes prompt and decisive action to maintain children in their own homes or place them, as quickly as possible, in permanent homes with other families. Simply stated, permanency planning means safely reducing entrances into foster care and expediting exits from foster care via reunification and adoption.
