The role of SWAN is to address barriers to permanency for children and to respond to the increased numbers of children needing adoption services.  To achieve this mission we adhere to a model of public and private collaboration for adoption services demonstrating a statewide program that provides safety and permanency for the children.

The goal of finding a permanent, supportive family for every child drives the network.  Most follow-up studies show that children who enter the foster care system and then are later adopted, go on to lead productive lives, supporting the view that adoption is the ideal alternative to the impermanence of the foster care system.   Every child deserves a permanent family. Children who are waiting in care are experiencing unresolved grief, loss of sibling relationships, and the opportunity for permanent family relationships.  Their loss of a sense of security and safety leads to attachment difficulties and an erosion of their feelings of worth and ultimately their self esteem.  Permanent, prepared families provide a healing process for those children who have been abused/neglected, and/or who may have been living long-term in out-of-home care within the child welfare system. Therefore, it is vital that the process for permanency be conducted, with definitive results, as quickly as possible for these children.

Difficulties in establishing permanency for children often arise out of the attitude that children with certain characteristics (older, minority race, siblings, disabling conditions) are unadoptable.   We are working to eradicate this belief in the decision making process from intake through goal change, to selection of families, including county and private agency caseworkers, supervisors and even judges. Many have never really believed that having a lifetime family was really important.  The SWAN Program believes in the healing power of families.  This philosophy has been effective in confronting barriers to providing permanency.

The intent of SWAN has been to enhance and provide support to county children and youth services agencies through the provision of additional services that save time in completing many of the tasks in preparing children for permanency and in developing families for these waiting children. Much of the work with county children and youth agencies involves the prime contractor providing technical assistance, resources, and support.  Several tools are available to do this for the network to be successful in moving towards timely adoptions for children.

As SWAN services are provided to counties, emphasis must be placed on the provision of support systems, agency specific training, case review and technical assistance around decision making. The staff of FDR, serving as SWAN coordinators, are viewed as adoption experts and resources to support and assist the staff of county agencies to prioritize their decision making around permanency.

Pennsylvania's recruitment efforts target minority communities. We believe that many families will come forward when they know that children are waiting for a permanent family.

In making matching decisions, adoption workers should evaluate the family’s ability to form relationships and to commit to a specific child, ability to help the child integrate into the family, ability to accept the child’s background and help the child cope with his or her past, ability to accept the behavior and personality of the specific child, ability to validate the child’s cultural, racial and ethnic background and ability to meet the child’s particular educational, developmental or psychological needs.

The Statewide Adoption Network assumes responsibility for the recruitment and development of “waiting families” to respond to the demand for permanent families.  Resource families (foster families, previous adoptive families, and kinship families) are vital towards this process. As a resource, One Church One Child (OCOC) has great opportunity to access the African American community through an established recruiting system in churches.  Partnering through technical assistance and support activities will increase the effectiveness of this valuable program to identify families for the large number of African American children waiting for a permanent family.

The network adheres to the basic belief that children grow best in families.  Many families who want to build their family through adoption are committed is to the concept of serving the child who needs them the most, not necessarily selecting a specific child to adopt.  Agencies are encouraged and trained to be flexible about matching, without regard to race, age, marital status, and lifestyle.

Today’s adoptive parent must be regarded as a RESOURCE for the waiting child and a member of the permanency team. The resource pool of families should reflect the demographics of waiting children. Building adoptive families is about building relationships.  Critical to this understanding of relationship building is how relationships develop within the network.  Trust among network members contributes to the development of trusting relationships with prospective families who join the permanency team.  In the adoption process, parents are exposed to the variety of problems that children may have.  Parents are also involved in the selection of the specific child that will become a member of their family.  When they are members of the team in this way, their belief in their ability to work with a child and their faith in their future as a family is much stronger.

Recruitment and child specific recruitment activities are necessary on an ongoing basis. This is a priority for DPW and Diakon/FDR.   In concert with the Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange and the web site, www.adoptpakids.org, the prime contractor will assure leadership and advocacy for approximately 4,000 children currently waiting for permanency.  Child specific recruitment requires innovative methods, but also includes reviewing past placement resources or relationships of the child for possible individuals/families who may have continued an interest.  The growth of kinship care has provided more stable placement histories for children in their birth families and should also be supported as a viable permanency option for children with foster care status. 

What do families need? We know, and parents agree, that adoption failures are often caused by the lack of post adoption supports.  As part of a systemic approach, the major service fields involved in adoption—mental health and social services—must establish stronger, more effective, and respectful connections that promote appropriate services to meet the needs of the adoptive family.