Family Preservation and Reunification with Restore Hope
One of the most effective and crucial ways to end the child welfare crisis is through family preservation and reunification, which is why it’s the first focus of our Well-Being Support Ecosystem approach. Over half of cases in 2023 where a child was removed from the home were preventable. Family preservation keeps children from being placed in foster care, preventing children from experiencing the trauma of removal and separation. When a removal does occur, the primary goal becomes reunification. In both cases, many families could stay together or reunify quicker if they receive the help they need promptly. Yet many families don’t know what resources are available, and organizations often don’t communicate with each other to wrap around families holistically.
We spoke with Paul Chapman, director of Restore Hope, one of our partners making significant waves in solving those very problems. Over the last few years, their program has steadily reversed the foster care trends in Arkansas county by county. The incredible results speak for themselves, so we sat down with Paul to discuss the importance of family preservation and reunification in ending the child welfare crisis.
How did Restore Hope and the 100 Families model come about?
I started volunteering at a prison in Little Rock, Arkansas. That’s where I saw the foster care-to-prison pipeline. From 2012 to 2016, Arkansas had the highest prison population growth in the country, and the number of kids in foster care grew, too. We started looking into collaboration with other organizations to work together on this crisis.
In 2018, we wrote the governor a strategy paper about collective impact, and he told us to go for it. The first year involved bringing people and organizations together. We all acknowledged that our individual best wasn’t good enough, so we developed the 100 Families Initiative. We officially launched in 2019, and as soon as it did, I mean it was like two months in, and the momentum started building.
How does the 100 Families Initiative work?
Essentially, 100 Families is a model that uses a software called Hope Hub to help a community coordinate the existing resources latent within its agencies and organizations. It’s more efficient for the agencies and results in better outcomes for the client. The goal is to move 100 people at a time from crisis to career.
We take Arkansas’ DCFS data every month, and we have a public dashboard anyone can see. It gives you detailed data and trends over the past 12 months for every county in Arkansas. We rank all that and push it out into the field so that community leaders have month-old data to make better decisions on them, rather than waiting on the government to publish the data a year later.
What makes Restore Hope and 100 Families different?
I use a couple of illustrations. One is a list of all the different people needed to build a house. You don’t just call your friend up and say, ‘I’ve got blueprints for a house, and I want you to get it done.’ He’s like, ‘Man, I’m a plumber. I can get clean water in and dirty water out, but I don’t know anything about countertops. I can’t lay a foundation.’ There’s also no general contractor to help with the sequence, and it’s regulated to the nth degree. But that’s exactly what we expect of someone in crisis.
We track 13 areas of social determinants of health. When we meet a client with a child welfare case or fixing to have one, they’re in three areas of significant crisis on average. How do you prevent a child’s removal or speed up reunification when all those things are so complex? No one agency or organization could do all that. Sometimes we’re serving the same families and don’t even know about it, so Hope Hub helps service providers connect with one another.
How does 100 Families support family preservation and reunification specifically?
Another illustration I use is the child in a river analogy. A kid floats by in the river, so you jump and go get them. Then it happens again and again until finally, you send some people upstream to find out why so many kids keep falling in the river. Yes, we help the kids in the river, but it would be much better if the kid never fell in in the first place.
When we get a case of child removal, we’re usually talking about poverty-related issues. What we see is if we can keep children with families, except for the 20% of cases involving abuse, it’s good. Even though they may grow up lacking things like new Air Jordans, they’re nonessentials. Kids need family. Love goes a long way.
You’ve spoken before about the power of accountability and data. How does data help you serve families better?
I don’t know where the quote originally came from, but it’s a simple and profound truth: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Many nonprofits don’t measure much, but the ones that do measure inputs, not outcomes. For example, a food pantry might measure in weight or units moved, but they don’t measure food security. They take care of an immediate need, but wouldn’t it be great to also help someone become food secure?
Hope Hub tracks data and outcomes in real time, which allows all the service providers in a community to immediately see the impact. These multiple services affect each other, so transportation solutions will impact education outcomes, food outcomes, and possibly legal outcomes. Tracking the data allows you to see how related everything is and come around a family more holistically.
You’ve been in the room with judges, DCS commissioners, police officers, and many more. How do you rally the community around the cause and take an active role?
We show them the data-sharing model and pitch a vision for working together, better outcomes, and more efficiency. We also hold monthly alliance meetings. Panels or community leaders in different sectors talk about what’s important to them, the rules they’re bound by, and how to engage with them. In other words, we build a team.
Restore Hope’s Achievements in Family Preservation and Reunification
Restore Hope has measured incredible success over the years. They first started 100 Families in Fort Smith, one of the hardest counties, and now operate in 18 counties. In the past 12 months, 550 Arkansas residents and families completed the journey from crisis to career with the 100 Families Initiative. Pope County’s stats have inverted, and they now have more foster families than children in foster care. The reunification rate in Arkansas is only 43%, but for those who go through 100 Families, it’s above 60% for birth parents and 80% for kinship placements.
When you give to For Others, you help us and organizations like Restore Hope preserve and reunify birth families. Please consider giving today so that more children and families experience hope!
