OHIO: A sibling group of four was referred to the Kinnect To Family program after a placement disruption. Their lives are currently in limbo and time is of the essence. The ones old enough to be aware of what’s going on don’t know what’s going to happen to them.
They don’t know who they are going to live with or where they will go next.
Great efforts are underway to bring these siblings together and raise them under one roof. At present, they’re in separate households. Because these children all grew up together, they very much want to live with one another. The people working on their behalf want that too. While each parent is working on an individual case plan, there are professionals working hard to ensure that these kids are in a safe and stable place until they can all reunify with their mother.
Being responsible for children like these siblings is why it’s critical to make People Search and Family Connections free and accessible to everyone who does this most important work of connecting kids in care to families. People Search can find more relatives and other caring adults in seconds instead of days, weeks, months or even years. To maximize People Search results, those contacts can be imported into our Family Connections webpage which logs all notes, organizes family statuses and histories, and tracks all engagements.
In the case of these siblings, their Kinnect to Family Specialist says the family search engines she uses most often are Accurint and People Search as they complement each other very well. Accurint helps identify who is a relative and who is not. Most of the time, Accurint and People Search line up but with these siblings, People Search was able to capture information that Accurint missed. On People Search, she found contact information for one father and social media information on the other father. Using both Accurint and People Search together significantly cut down on her family search time for this sibling group and all her cases.
“We’re on our way to a success story here for these children. I had no information about the two fathers and other relatives before finding them on People Search.”
The Kinnect to Family Specialist also said that the Family Connections app was the most useful to her because, having worked with this family before, all her information was saved. With other programs, she would have had to re-input all her information, which would take a long time and make conversations with relatives more awkward.
“I couldn’t start this case as easily if I didn’t have the Family Connections app because everything was right there. I could pick up where I left off. Thanks to Family Connections, I can reconnect with families in a much more meaningful way.”
Connect Our Kids is a non-profit dedicated to leveraging technology to find families, build connections, and create a community for children in the foster care system. Want to help more children like this sibling group? You can today by donating HERE.
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