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Keeping Families Together
This prevention program for children with special needs is truly family-focused for the goal is to keep the family together and prevent the children from being placed in foster care. Started in 2000, the program has an outstanding track record - 99.7% of the children have remained home with their families. Children in this program may be medically fragile or severely disabled. Autism, Down's syndrome and cancer are common conditions. But, as Annetta Stephens, the supervisor, explains, "It's not just a question of ill children. Something is going on that makes it difficult for the parents to cope. There's a risk that the child will need to be placed out of the home and that the family will disintegrate."
CCC provides case management services to meet the needs of the whole family. Referrals come from schools, hospitals, friends, as well as other parts of VNSNY. Annetta emphasizes that when case planners make an initial assessment of a family's needs, they're careful to ask what the family believes they need, a basic question often overlooked. It's not uncommon for case planners to start putting services in place before they've even left the home.
Services vary. It could be nursing or respite care, physical therapy or early intervention, mental health services for the parents, acquiring a wheelchair for a child, or finding an appropriate school placement. Often a family is involved with four or five different agencies that may or may not be flexible in scheduling appointments and the family becomes overwhelmed.
A family can easily end up with four or more appointments in a single day. The case planner can intervene and arrange workable schedules. Case planners work with the families to establish goals and define family responsibilities. Parent advocates, who are themselves parents of special-needs children, are also part of the program. The advocates can share their own experiences, act as a model for the family, and teach them how to advocate on behalf of their children to gain access to services.
"We're continually developing resources. There is an extensive array of services to support children in the home," says Annetta. "If a child is removed, we've failed."
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