Planning for permanence includes:

• family assessment
• family support services
• reunification services
• pre-placement planning services
• placement services
• adoption services, and
• post-adoption services.

Options for permanence may include:

• reunification
• relatives, friends, godparents
• adoption
• foster care with a long term agreement
• therapeutic foster care
• independent living
• emancipation.

Adoption is the method provided by law of assuring children, who cannot, or will not, be cared for by their birth parents, the security of a home in which they may be brought up with the same mutual rights and obligations as those existing between children and birth parents.

Most of the children the Department places have special needs thus requiring the Department to recruit families who can parent children with physical or mental disability, serious emotional maladjustment, older children, and sibling groups and ethnic factors that may present a barrier to adoption.

A family, as well as a sense of community, enables children to accept, identify and understand their strengths and limitations. It puts them on the path to becoming independent and well-adjusted adults.

Ensuring a continuum of care for children, will assist the child to reach their maximum potential.

Indeed, the emotional scars that occur because a child does not have a permanent family pose the greatest threat and become a lifelong handicap to the child.