Set a Time Limit on Voluntary Safety Plans

About this recommendation

Sometimes, a family or community can come together to safely support keeping a family together, even when safety concerns have been alleged or even confirmed. If a child welfare agency helps a family make a safety plan that keeps the child from coming into care, the plan should have a time limit, at which point the team comes back together.
Without an expiration date to formally end (or, hopefully, not escalate) the agency’s involvement, a family may feel coerced into following a plan indefinitely for fear their child will be taken away. This is a version of “hidden foster care” that can be avoided with clear timelines.

How to do this

• Set a policy that voluntary safety plans made in order to keep children from entering foster care must have an associated timeframe.
• Ensure there is a way in your IT system, or a reliable workaround method, to keep track of plan dates. Reminders should happen far enough in advance to avoid a last-minute planning emergency. The timeframe for reminders depends on your jurisdiction’s capacity to plan for and schedule a meeting to evaluate and resolve the plan. For example, if it takes an average of three weeks to schedule this kind of meeting, your reminder should be at least a month prior to expiration.

Who's doing this

What they're doing

• Oklahoma’s Family Centered Services is a type of intervention offered to families to help children and families stay together after the investigation has identified safety concerns for the child. They limit these plans to 6 months. If a child has to go to a voluntary out of home placement in this circumstance, the goal is to move to an in-home safety plan within 60 days; if the out of home placement is expected to last more than 90 days, it requires higher levels of approval.
• Does your jurisdiction set a timeframe on voluntary safety plans? Tell us!