As part of her participation in the Minority Professional Leadership Development (MPLD) program, Melissa Fleurio was tasked with seeking a solution to an issue she encountered in her work.
As a post-adoption and guardianship services coordinator at the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services, Fleurio helps families navigate challenges. In her role managing a portion of the state’s post-adoption services contracts, she has witnessed many adoptive and guardianship families come forward for support only after they were in crisis. She believed families would benefit more if they sought help earlier and suspected one way to achieve that outcome was to change when and how professionals communicate with families about accessing support after permanency.
These thoughts came to mind when she began the action research project component of MPLD, which asks fellows to research an issue related to adoption, guardianship, or kinship and then design a potential approach to address that situation. Fellows then implement that solution in their work.
For her project, Fleurio recalled her own experiences as she sought an answer to the following question:
If staff are trained to emphasize post-adoption services in a manner that ensures families are informed of the benefits and through follow-up encouraged to utilize it for more than just crisis intervention, will it improve adoption outcomes and stability?
Gathering Information
In the first stage of her project, Fleurio completed a literature review, which revealed a couple of key insights.
First, the literature confirmed that assessments and data collection can’t predict which families will need post-adoption support, which means that all families should be presented information about available post-adoption services. Second, the review demonstrated that families can benefit from a variety of post-permanency services to help ease the adjustment to permanency and to stabilize the family.
Next, Fleurio conducted a survey to assess knowledge of the state’s post-adoption resources. Of the eighty-one respondents, 62 percent were staff from either private adoption agencies or various agency departments, such as child protective services, caregiver recruitment and retention unit, foster care, and adoption. Another 30 percent of respondents were caregivers identified as an adoptive resource for children legally free for adoption and with a goal of adoption. The remaining 8 percent were individuals who filled other essential roles for children and youth.
Fleurio’s survey showed that 86 percent of the respondents were familiar with the Georgia Center for Resources and Support (GACRS), while only 43 percent were familiar with available crisis intervention services.
As many foster families receive their training through GACRS, Fleurio hypothesized that they likely learned about those services earlier in their child welfare journey. So, she included in her survey a question asking about when respondents first learned about the services.
Their answers proved enlightening. In spite of a state policy saying that families should learn about post-adoption supports at the time of orientation or information meeting, only 38 percent of families reported hearing about services at that time.
Staff responses were similar. Only 36 percent of professionals said they notified families about services in the orientation or information meeting. Another 22 percent notified families when parents were considering whether to adopt, and 16 percent shared information at the time the family was signing the adoption assistance agreement. The remainder told families about services at other times, including after finalization when issues arose.
Staff were also asked how families felt about learning about post-adoption services. Staff reported that almost half of families (46 percent) had a positive response, while 38 percent had a neutral response, and another 14 percent had a mostly positive response. The final 2 percent had a negative response, saying services seemed insufficient to meet the family’s current serious needs.
This data indicated that there was room for growth in helping families learn about and feel good about post-adoption services.
Action research project
To address that room for growth, Melissa developed a training course on the benefits of post-adoption services as her MPLD action research project. In November 2023, she provided the training virtually to more than 200 staff members representing all program areas within the Division of Family & Children Services.
In her training, Fleurio covered
- history of post-adoption services
- the division’s commitment to providing support to adoptive and guardianship families
- available services
- policy requirements and best practices about when and how to share information with families, including weaving data about post-adoption services into conversations with prospective adopters
- talking points to share with families and information about which DFCS staff could help if they had questions
- the value of post-adoption services, including sustaining permanency, reducing the likelihood of further trauma for children, increasing family resilience, and lowering the risk of future maltreatment
Many training attendees had years of experience. More than 40 percent had worked in child welfare for more than eleven years, and 28 percent had six to ten years of experience. Only 9 percent had been in child welfare for less than a year. Regardless of the time spent in the field, attendees’ knowledge all increased significantly.
Prior to attending the training
- 25 percent of respondents reported that they had no awareness, knowledge, or appreciation about post-adoption services
- 53 percent rated their level of knowledge as moderate
- 25 percent rated their level of knowledge as high
After the training,
- 50 percent rated themselves as having a moderate level of awareness, knowledge, and appreciation about post-adoption services
- 50 percent rated their knowledge level as high
Respondents also reported that they learned a lot about how to inform families about the benefits of post-adoption services. After the training, 68 percent of respondents reported that they thought post-adoption services were highly likely to improve adoption outcomes and stability. All respondents also said they intended to encourage families to use post-adoption services for more than just crisis intervention. These results suggest that workers’ positive feelings about support services can be conveyed to the families they are serving.
What can workers and agency leaders do?
Fleurio’s research demonstrated what she’d already suspected: that it’s more efficient and effective to address the challenges adoptive and guardianship families face before the problems become overwhelming to families.
Her research also offers lessons for other states and agencies, namely that they can take steps to increase families’ awareness that it is normal and expected for them to need support after finalization.
Agencies can
- develop policies about when and how professionals should share information with families about available post-permanency supports
- create easy-to-understand information for all staff about the value of post-permanency services and how and when to communicate that information to families
- create information for families about available services and the value of accessing support early
- provide training to all staff about when and how to share information with families
Workers at all stages in the adoption process can
- learn about the importance of post-permanency supports
- make sure they understand the supports available to adoptive and guardianship families in their community, including which families are eligible
- share information with families early and often during their adoption and guardianship journey, beginning with the first discussions with prospective adopters
- let families know that most adoptive and guardianship families need support at some time during their journey and encourage them to view needing support as normal and expected
Fleurio said she is glad to be part of the post-permanency team at Georgia DFCS and appreciates their commitment to enhancing post-permanency support to Georgia’s family, which includes assessing the services currently offered and adding supportive services.
Learn more
To learn more about Fleurio’s research action project and its many insights, you can view this YouTube video to watch her presentation.
