Advocacy to Ensure Developmentally Appropriate Transitions for Children and Youth in Foster Care

One critical issue our Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI) sites have identified across the country is the trauma children experience when they move between homes-even when the move is ultimately positive, such as reunification or connection with relatives. These transitions, when poorly planned or rushed, cause harm: they disrupt trust and attachment, sever important relationships, interrupt education and health care, and compound existing trauma. The consequences are deep and long-lasting, affecting mental health, development, and future stability. And they contribute to widespread systemic challenges like resource parent attrition, placement breakdowns, and failed reunifications or guardianships.

To confront this harm, several California QPI counties-such as Fresno and San Diego-have pioneered developmentally sensitive transition policies. These practices center the child and require collaborative, child development-informed planning involving birth families, resource families, and youth. They address critical factors like timing, transportation, emotional preparation, continuity of care and education, and opportunities to say goodbye. They also prioritize maintaining essential relationships- before, during, and after the move.

Creating Healthy Transitions for Babies and Toddlers in Foster Care

This project, in partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is promoting the healthy development of babies and toddlers in foster care through building the power of families and supporters to advocate for improving the transitions of babies and toddlers into foster care, between homes, and when returning to their birth families. Our goal for this project is to ensure that, by the year 2034, every child under the age of three in foster care has a planful, developmentally sensitive transition before moving from one home to another that addresses their need for strong consistent relationships and recognizes the importance of early attachment.

Co-Sponsoring New Legislation in California to Ensure Healthy Transitions for All California Children in Foster Care

California Assembly Bill 896 will help ensure that every child and youth in foster care experiences a developmentally sensitive and well-planned transition which will help ensure that every child and youth in foster care who moves from one home to another experiences a developmentally sensitive and well-planned transition that addresses their need for strong, consistent relationships.

Launching A New Pilot Project in QPI sites in Nevada To Implement Ways to Increase Compliance with Existing Healthy Transitions Policies for Children in Foster Care

While Nevada successfully created and approved a healthy transitions policy, it is most often ignored when a child moves. In fact, many caseworkers are unaware that a policy exists. Compliance is voluntary and the policy serves as at most, a guide to good practice. This is not atypical in child welfare systems, including systems committed to QPI changes, when there is no monitoring system for compliance. The goals of this pilot project are as follows:

• developing and demonstrating an effective way of implementing the transitions policy;
• measuring the impact of this implementation on child well-being, and on systems goals and developing and compiling direct evidence of the value of transition planning;
• developing a system to ensure that transition planning continues to occur.