Make a plan to keep children and youth connected to their supportive adults

Long-term, consistent relationships with supportive adults are critical to a child or youth’s well-being. Supportive adults can provide emotional support, stability, and a sense of belonging, as well as practical support like transportation, tutoring, and advice.

But if a supportive adult can't serve as the caregiver, it requires more intention and effort to maintain the relationship. Create a plan to maintain connections so that children and youth have people they can rely on.

How to do this

Work with children and youth to document supportive connections

Work with children and youth to identify all the important people in their lives. This includes family members, teachers, friends, coaches, and even pets.

Consider using a genogram or heart map to record these relationships. Download a printable heart map and walk children and youth through it. Encourage children and youth to list "someone in their heart" on each line, and draw more lines as needed.

Use age-appropriate prompts:

"Who came to your birthday party?"
"If you had to call someone for help, who would that be?"
"Who do you share good or bad news with?"
"If you're having a bad day, who gives you the best advice?"
"Who do you think about when you lay your head on your pillow at night?"
For older youth: "If you had a flat tire, who would you call?"

Remember this is an ongoing conversation. Start with maybe 5 minutes, then spend more time as the child or youth opens up and builds trust. Continue the conversation throughout the entire course of the case, as they may develop new supportive relationships as they grow.

Reach out to each supportive adult

Gather contact information and reach out to each supportive connection. When reaching out, be clear that you aren’t necessarily looking for the adult to be a caregiver and there are other ways to remain a supportive adult in the child or youth’s life.

Ask if they can suggest any other supportive relationships. They might be able to name other supportive adults in the child or youth’s life that they forgot to name.

Check back if they’re unavailable. If the child or youth identifies someone who isn’t available to maintain a meaningful connection with them at the time of outreach, make a plan to check in with them again, as their availability might change.

Make a plan to stay in touch with each connection

Talk with the supportive adult, the youth, and the caregiver about their needs and their relationships with each other. Discuss ways the adult can support the youth based on what you learn. For example, if they used to go to baseball games together, find out whether the adult can take the youth to games now. Or if the adult has a car and free time in the afternoon, talk about whether they can pick up the youth from school.

Talk to the caregiver about their needs also. They might have ideas of support that could lighten their load or gaps in care that need to be filled. They may also have insight into the youth’s current emotional state and what support a meaningful connection could provide. Be sure to learn about their relationship with the supportive adult. If there are difficulties in their relationship, discuss ways to offer support.

Draft an initial plan for children and youth to stay in contact with supportive adults. Use what you’ve learned from your conversations to make a plan that makes sense based on their needs and their relationships.

The plan could include regular touch points like:

In-person visits
Phone or video calls
Social media interactions
Letters or emails
Providing transportation
Attending school events
Tutoring sessions
Being a formal respite provider
Bringing a meal over for a weekly dinner

You can even make a plan to help the youth stay connected to pets, such as visits to a dog park.

Make sure your plan includes resources or support to help supportive adults stay in contact with the child or youth. For example, consider offering a gas card to help supportive adults provide transportation or a cheap tablet so they can have video calls instead of phone calls.

Share the action plan with a youth's entire team, including their foster parents. Make maintaining supportive connections a formal responsibility for foster parents.

Revisit and update the plan on a regular basis. Choose a place in your IT system to store these plans so you have it available for future use. Make sure to review and revise it regularly. If either the supportive adult or the child or youth’s schedule changes, you may need to adjust the plan so that they can still maintain the relationship instead of ending visits.

This strategy in action

Arizona's Fostering Sustainable Connections program helps children reconnect with important people in their lives. A Family Engagement Specialist then helps plan how these people can stay involved with the child.

Epic 'Ohana in Hawaii uses meetings to find and engage extended families. This includes creating concrete plans for how each person will remain involved with the youth.

Iowa's policy asks workers to find out if people who can't take placements might still provide other support. This could include emails, phone calls, visits, or joining holiday gatherings.