The Connections Project: a relational approach to engaging birth parents in visitation.

This paper presents a practical framework for relational practice with birth families, organized around parental visitation. The approach was developed in the Birth Family-Foster Family Connections Project, a three-year collaborative research demonstration project between a large private agency and the Washington State Department of Child and Family Services. The overall goal of the Connections Project, which served young children from infancy to age 6, was to create supportive connections among birth families, foster families, children, and the child welfare system. Although engaging parents in child welfare services is a challenging task for social workers, the Connections Project resulted in strong parent-worker relationships, very high participation in weekly visitation by birth parents, and quite extensive contact between birth and foster families. The paper describes relational strategies used by Connections social workers before and during visits, with the goal of providing child welfare social workers with a practical and effective framework for engaging parents through this core child welfare service.