Viewed in the context of current national trends, Project STAR in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stands at the forefront of agency efforts to insure children’s right to permanent and stable family relationships. Project STAR has demonstrated that children with a range of disabilities can be supported in their birth families or placed in adoptive families.
Project STAR was established in 1985 with funding from the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Planning Council (DDPC) as a collaborative project of The Rehabilitation Institute of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Children and Youth Services agency, and Three Rivers Adoption Council. Project STAR was one of four projects funded by the DDPC under it “Adoptive Family Recruitment Objective” for a three-year funding period. Since 1988, when finding from DDPC ended, Project STAR has been funded through a patchwork of grants, contracts, and other sources.
Consistent with its initial funding, Project STAR was founded as an adoption agency for children with developmental disabilities. Project “S.T.A.R.” stood for “Specialized Training for Adoption Readiness.” During its first three years, the project focused on identifying children available for adoption, recruiting, screening, and training prospective adoptive parents, and supporting the adoption.
Beginning in 1989, Project STAR’s mission gradually broadened to focus on permanency planning for children with disabilities. From its start, Project STAR had prided itself on being a “children’s service,” rather than a service for adoptive parents, were viewed as the agency’s “clients.” The adoption of permanency planning as a mission was a logical extension of this focus.
Permanency planning is both a planning process and philosophy directed toward ensuring each child’s right to a permanent home and stable relationships with one of more adults (Center on Human Policy, 1987; Taylor, Lakin, & Hill, 1989). According to the philosophy of permanency planning, children belong in families and need permanent family relationships. Permanency planning emphasizes supports to families to enable them to care for their children, family reunification when children have been placed out-of-home, and adoption or other permanent family placements for children who cannot live with their birth families.
In child welfare, permanency planning is required by the federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, P.L. 96-272. Few mental retardation, developmental disability, or other disability agencies in the United States have incorporated permanency planning into their policies and procedures. The State of Michigan is a notable exception.
Project STAR has been extremely successful in arranging adoptions and has demonstrated that caring and loving adoptive families can be found for children who have been considered “unadoptable” because of their disabilities. Since its establishment, Project STAR has placed children with severe multiple disabilities, autism, emotional disturbance, profound mental retardation, and severe medical involvement in adoptive families.
From 1985 until Spring 1992, Project STAR placed 80 children with disabilities in adoptive families. Among these placements, there have been few “disruptions,” or failed placements. Depending on how figures are calculated, disruptions range from three to ten. Project STAR was not involved in post-placement services for six of these children. Project STAR’s adoption services fall into five broad categories: (1) Permanency Assessment and Preparation of Child; (2) Family Recruitment and Preparation; (3) Family and Child Preplacement/Placement; (4) Post Placement Services; and (5) Post Finalization Services.
Project STAR now defines itself as “Permanency Planning Advocates of Western Pennsylvania.” This phrase has recently replaced “Specialized Training for Adoption Readiness” on Project STAR letterhead.
As a philosophy, permanency planning increasingly guides all of Project STAR’s activities. Unlike many adoption agencies, Project STAR seems to ask, “How can we build or strengthen permanent and stable family relationships for the child,” as opposed to asking, “How can we find children for adoptive families (or vice versa)?” The initial step in the adoption process is a “Permanency Assessment” of the child. There is a subtle, but important difference between a “Child Assessment,” on the one hand, and a “Permanency Assessment,” on the other. A “Child Assessment” focuses on the characteristics of the child; a “Permanency Assessment” looks at both the child’s characteristics and existing social relationships and explores a full range of permanency options, including but not limited to adoption. In some cases, Project STAR has advocated for permanent foster care for children living with caring foster families unable to adopt them, as opposed to severing the relationships by recruiting adoptive families.
As a set of practices, permanency planning at Project STAR refers to a range of services as well as planning and advocacy efforts to achieve permanency for children living out-of-home or at risk of placement. Project STAR’s first permanency planning efforts were supported by a DDPC grant in 1989; today these efforts are funded by different grants. The agency’s permanency planning activities fall into four categories.
The first is “family preservation” or efforts to prevent out-of-home placement. Depending on the family’s needs and circumstances, these efforts take many forms: planning and coordination of family support services; advocacy for the family with human services agencies; direct provision of goods or services; and information, encouragement, and emotional support to families. We accompanied one staff member to the home of a new-born with severe disabilities and medical involvements. The parents were pessimistic about the infant’s future and were considering placement in a private institution; the father, in particular, rejected the child. The Project STAR staff member talked honestly, but sympathetically with the parents. She explained that their image of their child’s future was inaccurate and gave examples of similar children who are living and thriving in families. While she encouraged them to try to maintain their child at home, she asked them to consider adoption, rather than institutional placement. The family placed the child in foster care for four months, but then as a consequence of Project STAR’s intervention, decided to try to raise their child themselves. Nearly one year later, the child was still living with the family.
The second category of permanency planning activities relates to encouraging a family’s involvement with their children who have been placed out-of-home. For a host of reasons, families may place their children in institutions, community living arrangements, or in foster homes. In the field of developmental disabilities, out-of-home placement often has signaled an end to the family’s relationship with a child.
Project STAR has worked closely with some birth families to encourage and facilitate their continued relationships with their children. In the case of one single mother whose daughter requires nursing care, Project STAR supported the mother’s decision to place the child in a foster home arranged through the county MH/MR agency. Project STAR offered steady encouragement to the mother to keep up contact with her daughter, advocated for the mother with human service agencies, and worked to facilitate cooperation and open communication between the mother and the foster mother.
The third category is “family reunification.” As suggested above, placement in the field of developmental disabilities traditionally has been viewed as terminal event. Once placed, the child was never expected to return home. For the vast majority of children with developmental disabilities who are placed out-of-home, the first option should be reunification with their families. Project STAR has not only encouraged family reunification, but helped arrange support services to enable children to return to their families.
The final category of Project STAR’s permanency planning activities relates to finding other permanent options for children who cannot or should not be reunited with their families. For children whose ties with their families have been broken, adoption is the option of choice. Few children in the mental health and mental retardation systems are legally free for adoption, however. Even when families are no longer involved with children in private institutions and other placements in the mental health and mental retardation systems, parental rights have seldom been terminated and children are left in a legal limbo. Permanent foster care is likely to be the most stable and permanent option for these children.
Through its permanency planning activities, Project STAR is currently working with six children. Of these children, Project STAR is attempting to preserve or reunite the families in four cases and pursuing adoption, or if parental rights cannot be terminated, permanent foster care in two cases.
Despite its success, Project STAR has encountered formidable obstacles in attempting to bring permanency to the lives of children in Pennsylvania’s mental retardation and mental health systems. As a private agency, Project STAR does not have access to all children placed in public and private facilities or to families considering out-of-home placement.
While state agencies in Pennsylvania have supported Project STAR and funded several adoption and permanency planning initiatives, permanency planning cannot be treated as a discrete program or add-on; it is a philosophy and a process that must be built into the entire system. In Pennsylvania, as in all states, the realization of permanent homes and families for children with disabilities will require a fundamental shift in policies and practices regarding out-of-home placement.
Taylor, S. J., Lakin, K.C., & Hill, B.K. (1981). Permanency planning for children and youth: Out of home placement decisions. Exceptional Children, 55(6), 541-549.
For further information on Project STAR and permanency planning in Pennsylvania, see Taylor,
S. J., Racino, J. A., Walker, P., Lutfiyya, Z. M. and Shoultz, B., Permanency Planning for Children with Developmental Disabilities in Pennsylvania: The Lessons of Project STAR. (Syracuse, NY Research and Training Center on Community Integration, Center on Human Policy, 1992), or contact Susan Maczka, Director, Project STAR (Specialized Training for Adoption Readiness, The Rehabilitation Institute of Pittsburgh, 6301 Northumberland Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15217).
Preparation of this article was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, U.S. Department of Education for the Research and Training Center on Community Integration through Cooperative Agreement #H133B00003-90 awarded to the Center on Human Policy at Syracuse University. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors an no endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education should be inferred.