Road to Reunification

By Wonswayla Mackey
Deputy Director of Clark County Family Services

June is recognized as National Reunification Month, as social service agencies raise awareness and celebrate the extraordinary work that goes into strengthening and helping families. Family Services celebrates families — and the advocates who help families stay together — by building on family strengths and actively engaging parents, youth and families as experts in their own lives. 

Reunification is the ideal goal for children in foster care. When children are separated from their families, the goal is to return the children to their birth family, when it is safe to do so. 

Reunification is a delicate yet rewarding process. It requires many individuals to come together and work towards the best interest of the child. Foster caregivers play an important role in reunification; they temporarily care for children during their family’s time of need, and model appropriate parenting skills, behaviors, and modes of positively interacting with children. 

In the words of a foster parent, “If you support birth parents and treat them with respect, it helps them and it lessens the trauma of the child when they go home.” 

Keeping birth parents in the loop and involving them in key decision making are building blocks to forming healthy relationships between foster parents and biological parents. These relationships provide continuity and a sense of safety for the child. 

Here are some tips for reunification from foster and biological families: 

1. Build connections from the start. 

2. Work with your caseworker. 

3. Keep an open mind and an open heart. 

4. Maintaining contact after reunification or other permanency 

5. Partnership Resources 

Reunification is a critical process for children in foster care. While it can be challenging and may take time, reunification is an achievable goal that can have positive long-term outcomes from both children and their families. It is important that biological families are supported through the process and be provided with the skills and resources to help their children thrive. 

Family Services commends the biological parents who put forth the effort to reunite with their children. It does not go unnoticed! We also want to send a special thank you to our relative and foster caregivers; you are truly making a difference in the lives of our children and families.