Grantee Projects Family Builders By Adoption
Dumisha Jamaa Project: Permanent Families and Open Adoption for Older Youth (May 2008)
The Dumisha Jamaa Permanency Project is a partnership of Alameda County Social Services Agency (ACSSA) and Family Builders, a nonprofit agency with a strong track record in promoting permanency for older foster youth. The project includes a research and program evaluation component that is provided by the Edgewood Institute for the Study of Community-Based Services. The Institute is an integral component of the collaboration.
Dumisha is a direct services project designed to find permanent connections for referred youth. The program addresses each youth’s unique permanency situation. To help the youth find permanent families, we first ask the youth who they consider to be important people in their lives; we discuss life experiences and potential permanent connections with them, search for permanent adults through file mining and Internet searches and network to build greater permanency using relatives and contacts. We also use specialized and targeted recruitment strategies to seek potential families. While the goal is to find the youth a permanent family, an immediate benefit is that the search process usually results in the youth gaining information about, and contact with, a wider circle of relatives and other connections. The project is particularly sensitive to the importance of sibling relationships, and as a result, many youth have made contact and built relationships with their siblings through their participation in the project.
Key components and strategies include:
- A broad and comprehensive commitment by Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services to systems change, to promote permanency for all foster children and youth.
- Co-location of the Dumisha staff within Alameda County SSA. This allows for a complete integration of the Dumisha staff with the case carrying workers.
- A particular sensitivity to the importance of sibling relationships. The project seeks to refer all of the siblings to the project together, even if they have been previously separated and are in different units within the department.
- Use of a support group based on the Family Bound curriculum developed by Bob Lewis (who is a clinical consultant to the project).
- A mixed-methods approach by the program evaluator that includes multi-layered incorporation of the evaluation components into the direct services work of the project.
| To date, the project has achieved the following permanency outcomes: | |
| 2 | Finalized adoptions |
| 6 | Adoptions pending |
| 4 | Finalized guardianships |
| 6 | Guardianships pending |
| 4 | Returned to biological relatives |
| 1 | Living with relational permanent connection (without legal status) |
| 4 | Living with a foster parent with whom the youth has relational permanence |
Evaluation Tools
Evaluation measures used by Family Builders by Adoption were developed by the Edgewood Institute for the Study of Community-Based Services in conjunction with program staff. The “self-efficacy” and “social support scale” are for the youth only. There are two versions of the permanency scales. One version is for the youth and identified adults, and one version is for workers. The youth versions are intended to be completed directly by the youth although there may be situations where the worker would need to assist or explain certain questions.
The project uses a mixed-methods approach that includes collecting the quantitative measures at baseline and annually. Permanent adults complete measures within 30 days of being identified. Interviews with selected youth are conducted by the evaluator annually.
When a sufficient number of measures have been completed, the project will be performing a factor analysis of items on all measures to better understand the factors that are being measured and to eliminate items that are not providing useful data.
For more information, please contact:
Nancy McDonald, MA, MFT
Dumisha Jamaa Coordinator
Family Builders By Adoption
401 Grand Ave., Ste. 400
Oakland, CA 94610
Phone: (510) 272-0204