Abstract
When children are removed from their birth parents and placed in foster care, child welfare policy and practice prioritizes family reunification in permanency planning. Of the many services offered to families in support of reunification, parent-child visitation is one of the most important. The purposes of visitation are to maintain and support the parent-child relationship, facilitate improved parenting skills, and offer social workers opportunities to gauge the family’s progress in meeting reunification goals. Whether supervised or unsupervised, parent-child visitations most often involve face-to-face contact between family members. During periods of sheltering in place in response to COVID-19, however, face-to-face visits have been largely curtailed. In their place, child welfare agencies have begun using virtual visitation through various technology platforms such as smartphones, FaceTime, Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype, often facilitated by foster parents. A number of questions have arisen, however, about the effectiveness of virtual visitations and how best to use them as a means of supporting reunification goals. In the present article, we examine existing data on how children respond to virtual communication with parents and extended family and what practical issues and training needs are encountered when implementing virtual visits in juvenile dependency cases.
Keywords
Each year tens of thousands of children are removed from their homes by child protective services and placed into foster care. The reasons for their removal are varied, but typically are due to child neglect or abuse, parental substance abuse, coping difficulties in parents, child behavior problems, domestic violence, and/or family homelessness. Regardless of the reasons, child welfare policy and practice prioritizes family reunification as the initial case goal, which is in keeping with family preservation and permanency planning policies and objectives (Child Welfare League of America, 1995). Although not all children are able to return to their parents or primary caregivers, a majority typically do. For example, in the United States, the most recent 5 year statistics from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) indicate that from 2014 to 2018, family reunification was the case goal in 55% of new foster care placements and 50% of children exiting foster care during this period were reunified with family members (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014–2018).
To support the process of family reunification, child welfare agencies provide parents and children with a variety of time-limited services that build on family members’ strengths and address the concerns that were the basis for the child’s removal. Social workers implement strategies geared toward actively engaging family members in the reunification process by clarifying the reasons for child removal and the steps that need to be taken before the child can be safely returned home. Parents may be expected to enter and complete a substance abuse program, attend AA/NA, parenting classes and/or anger management classes, enroll in mental health counseling, and/or obtain adequate housing. Children may be offered mental health treatment, medical services, or other interventions to meet their special needs.
Among the many reunification services provided to the family, one of the most important is parent-child visitations (Partners for Our Children, 2016). The purpose of visitation, where family reunification is the goal, is to help children cope with separation and loss while in placement, support the parent-child relationship by helping biological parents become more attuned to their child’s needs, and to foster and/or maintain the attachment bond between them. Parent-child attachment is fundamental for the child’s health and well-being, not only in early childhood but throughout life (Cassidy, 2016; Sroufe, 2016). Removal of a child from a parent’s care and placement into a foster home is disruptive to the parent-child attachment (Dozier & Rutter, 2016) and increases the child’s risk for adjustment difficulties. Frequent and ongoing visitation between the parent and child, on the other hand, helps to ameliorate some of the relationship disruption, supports children’s emotional well-being, and facilitates a more successful reunification process (Mallon & Hess, 2005). In addition to supporting parent-child relationships, reunification services may also involve visits with siblings, the goal of which is to maintain and strengthen siblings bonds and prepare the child for returning to the family that also includes brothers and/or sisters. Another purpose of visitation is to offer social workers the opportunity to gauge the quality of the parent-child relationship, the ability of parents to respond appropriately to their children’s needs, and to assess progress toward achieving reunification goals.
The frequency, setting, and nature of visitation for parents and children depends on a number of factors including the child’s age, where the child and parents currently reside, the reasons for the child’s removal, the extent of birth family cooperation with case goals, and whether supervision is necessary (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2006; Partners for Children, 2016). Whenever possible, visitations between parents and children involve face-to-face meetings, supplemented when feasible by distance contact through telephone calls, texting, FaceTime exchanges, and/or other virtual visual forms of communication. Face-to-face visitation is given priority because it provides the best opportunity for parents and children to interact directly through all physical and sensory modalities and involves the type of interactions they commonly manifest in their everyday lives. Depending on the children’s age and the setting of the visits, parents may have the ability to feed their children, change their diapers/clothes, clean them, offer physical affection and comfort, have intimate conversations, read books to them, play with them, impose limits on their behavior, and when necessary, correct misbehavior. All of these parenting behaviors are critical for supporting the parent-child attachment bond (Cassidy, 2016; Pasco Fearson & Belsky, 2016) and facilitating more effective caregiving. Observation of face-to-face contact between parents and children also offers the best opportunity for social workers to assess the quality of the parent’s attunement to, understanding of, and ability to address their children’s needs.
Reunification services in the time of COVID-19
The health crisis associated with COVID-19, which emerged throughout the world in the first quarter of 2020, posed significant challenges for judicial, legal and child welfare professionals in meeting the needs of families who were involved in juvenile dependency cases, especially in response to sheltering in place (SIP) guidelines issued by local, regional, state, or national authorities. Recognizing these challenges, the Children’s Bureau in the United States offered guidance that encouraged flexibility in implementing statutory guidelines during the pandemic when service delivery to families was disrupted and encouraged professionals to consider alternative ways of providing family time and rehabilitation services in supporting reunification goals (Children’s Bureau, 2020). In the United States, there has been variability in how jurisdictions have responded to the pandemic with states and local authorities issuing their own emergency rules and procedures for addressing legal and service delivery issues during the pandemic—see for example, California Judicial Council Emergency Rules (2020) related to COVID-19. 1
Because close contact between people increased the risk of spreading the disease, traditional face-to-face visitations and other reunification services for foster children and their biological parents (e.g., mental health counseling, domestic violence groups, parenting classes, etc.) involving direct contact with others were either curtailed or became much more difficult to implement. These challenges potentially jeopardized the reunification process in terms of maintaining and strengthening parent-child relationships, addressing children’s special needs, fostering improved caregiving skills for biological parents, and providing a basis for assessing progress toward reunification goals by social workers. In addition, for some children who previously had frequent face-to-face contact with their parents prior to the onset of COVID-19, the restrictions on direct contact following SIP guidelines potentially could be traumatic for them, exacerbating pre-existing emotional and relationship challenges. Very young children are especially vulnerable for adjustment difficulties as they would likely not be able to understand the reasons underlying the loss of regular, direct contact with their mother, father, and/or siblings, and the critical time frame for developing primary attachment relationships with parents could be jeopardized.
In response to SIP guidelines, child welfare agencies began implementing other means of maintaining regular parent-child contact, primarily through telephone calls and virtual communication technology platforms such as FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom. There have been concerns, however, about relying on virtual visits as a means of supporting reunification goals and whether this type of contact is effective and/or would be well received by birth parents, foster children, foster parents, and social workers (Neil et al., 2020). Furthermore, there have been questions about whether the time frame for reunification should continue to follow statutory guidelines for juvenile dependency cases when parent-child visits are only or primarily through virtual means or be extended to compensate for the loss of time in direct face-to-face contact as a result of SIP (California Judicial Council Emergency Rules, 2020). Additional concerns have been raised about the disruption to other services for parents and children that were either curtailed or truncated during this period (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020).
In this article, we address the role of virtual visitation in supporting reunification services for children in foster care. Although other types of reunification services, especially for parents (e.g., parenting classes, substance abuse treatment, etc), have also been impacted by SIP guidelines, the issues associated with these services will not be addressed here. 2 Rather, we focus primarily on the following questions: (a) What do we know about how children respond to virtual communication?; (b) Is this type of contact effective in supporting an existing parent-child relationship when opportunities for face-to-face contact are limited or have been curtailed?; (c) Are there age/developmental or contextual factors that limit or enhance the effectiveness of virtual communication?; (d) What are the pros and cons of relying on virtual communication as a means of supporting the reunification process?; (e) How do virtual visits affect case planning?; and (f) What practical and training issues are associated with utilizing virtual communication technologies in supporting the reunification process? In addressing these issues, we rely on existing research studies in various areas regarding how children utilize and benefit from virtual communication with parents and others. Because there is limited research on the role of virtual communication in child welfare cases, we also draw upon our own clinical and forensic experience in family law and juvenile dependency cases.
Virtual parent-child communication
Separation from parents can be extremely stressful for children, increasing their risk for adjustment difficulties (Kobak et al., 2016). In order to bridge the gap created by separation between children and their loved ones, virtual contact has been utilized in a number of areas of family life including families with incarcerated parents (McLeod & Bonsu, 2018; Phillips, 2012; Skora & Poehlmann-Tynan, 2020), military families (Mathew-Juarez et al., 2013; Mogil et al., 2015), families with divorced parents (LaMarca, 2012; Saini & Polak, 2018; Saini et al., 2013), extended family members (e.g., grandparents) (McClure et al., 2018) and child welfare families (Iyer et al., 2020; Neil et al., 2020; Quinn et al., 2015). Research in these areas has found that children can benefit significantly in terms of knowledge development, emotional well-being and relationship maintenance from virtual communication with parents and others from whom they are separated. Even infants and toddlers have been shown to respond appropriately to video mediated social interactions with family members (McClure & Barr, 2017; McClure et al., 2018). Through active, playful, and emotionally positive engagement, parents are able to gain their young children’s attention, facilitate positive emotions in them, foster curiosity and exploration of their immediate environment, offer distant forms of affection and comfort (e.g., throwing kisses, pretend hugging) and display interest in their children’s activities and daily life experiences (McClure & Barr, 2017). The success of virtual parent-child contact, however, is often tied to the involvement of an active and motivated caregiver or support person who helps the child engage the distant parent, supports joint attention, and makes the interaction positive, playful and relevant. In addition, developmental factors also play a role in the success of virtual communication between parents and children. As would be expected, it is easier for older children to use virtual communication than younger children, not only because they are more experienced with technology devices and less dependent on a supportive caregiver to facilitate virtual contact, but also because they have better developed attentive, cognitive, communicative, and social skills than young children (Iyer et al., 2020). In contrast, very young children or those with developmental delays are dependent upon the presence of an attentive, motivated, and positive caregiver or support person to benefit from virtual communication.
Despite the emerging evidence that virtual communication can be very beneficial for children when they are separated from their parents and extended family members, video contact has a number of well-known limitations compared to face-to-face family interactions (McClure & Barr, 2017). For example, the lack of physical contact makes it more difficult for the parent to maintain the child’s attention, facilitate positive emotions, and offer physical affection and comforting, all of which are critical in fostering and maintaining secure parent-child emotional bonds (Stack, 2001). Direct eye contact and joint visual attention (e.g., pointing as a communicative gesture) are also more difficult to achieve with young children in video chats, which can interfere with the development or maintenance of the parent-child relationship, as well as compromise learning by the child (Parkinson & Lea, 2011). Furthermore, social contingency interactions (i.e., the ability of the parent to acknowledge and appropriately respond to a child’s behavior in a close, temporal manner), which are a critical component of parental attunement to children, can also be impaired in video interactions because of gaze misalignment between these individuals or because of all too common delays in the electronic connection between the devices being used by the parties (McClure & Barr, 2017). In short, although virtual visual communication offers many opportunities to foster and sustain relationships between parents and children who are separated from one another, and is certainly superior to telephone chats because of the added visual input, it lacks the richness of face-to-face family interactions.
Furthermore, there is no research suggesting that virtual visitation, by itself, can facilitate a secure attachment to a parent independent of face-to-face contact, although it may well help maintain an existing attachment. This is especially true for children who are removed from care under the age of three. Maintaining attachment relationships is especially critical when children go into foster care as placement, in and of itself, disrupts the connection between parent and child (Dozier & Rutter, 2016). Face-to-face visits help to preserve, as best as possible, the quality of the parent-child relationship that existed prior to removal. Fostering security in the attachment relationship requires a parent to be attuned to the child’s signals for care and to be able to provide such comfort and care when needed. These tasks are made much more difficult, and at times impossible, when visits are only or primarily through virtual means.
In summary, research indicates that children, including those who are quite young, are increasingly being exposed to electronic technology in their everyday lives (McClure & Barr, 2017). Although older children are more adept at using virtual communication than younger children, studies show that even infants and toddlers are capable of utilizing virtual technologies to learn and develop new skills, respond appropriately to social and emotional cues of a distant parent, and recognize people with whom they are interacting. Relevant to this article, is the question of how these findings translate to the issue of using virtual means of communication between parents and children in the service of reunification goals, especially during times of SIP.
Implementing virtual parent-child visitation in juvenile dependency cases
There is little research on the use of virtual visitation to satisfy statutory requirements for parent-child contact during juvenile dependency proceedings, or on the effectiveness of such contact on foster children’s well-being and their relationship with birth family members (Birnbaum, 2020). Existing research and literature reviews point to a number of perceived advantages and disadvantages in using smartphones and video assisted visitation, as well as challenges in implementing such visitation, in child welfare cases (Iyer et al., 2020; Neil et al., 2020; Quinn et al. 2015). In the sections to follow we highlight the findings of Neil et al. (2020), the only study, to date, providing empirical data on the experiences and perspectives of key stakeholders related to virtual contact between foster youth and their birth families during the pandemic lockdown; this is followed by a more general review of the benefits and drawbacks of virtual parent-child communication in support of family reunification in juvenile dependency cases.
Varying perspectives on virtual parent-child communication during shelter in place
As noted above, Neil et al. (2020) is the only study, to date, that has reported data on how different individuals involved with children in foster care experienced virtual parent-child communication during the pandemic. Researchers surveyed 197 individuals in the United Kingdom (social workers and other professionals, foster parents, adoptive parents, kinship caregivers, and birth relatives), and had telephone interviews with 24 of the respondents, regarding their experiences of and perspectives on the role and impact of virtual communication during SIP. No direct information from children was gathered, although the adult participants provided their own views on how children coped with virtual visits.
The study found that rapid and widespread use of digital communication occurred once the lockdown was put in place. In seeking guidance on the best way to support virtual communication between foster youth and their birth families, social workers indicated that the most helpful guidance addressed risk prevention and management, as well as information that facilitated collaboration between birth parents and foster parents. Although virtual visits saved time for social workers, they required learning new ways of working remotely, as well as making adjustments to new demands impacting contact plans. Social workers also reported that the primary ways they supported parent-child contact during the pandemic was helping birth parents understand the need for changes in visitation, helping them with the logistics of technology and online platforms needed for virtual visits, and helping them prepare for and manage virtual contact.
Demands on foster parents increased considerably, especially when they were responsible for facilitating virtual visits for youth in their care. Nevertheless, many adapted quickly to this new mode of parent-child contact. In fact, some reported that they already were using video chats to support foster children’s relationships with their birth family. In addition, they found it easier to reschedule missed visits when using virtual technology. Others, however, reported receiving little support from authorities during the pandemic, leading to increased anxiety about their role in supporting virtual parent-child contact and/or how to do it effectively. Concerns about the intrusive nature of virtual visits into the life of the foster family also were noted, as were logistical difficulties in scheduling virtual visits for multiple children in their care with different birth families. In many cases, previously supervised visits between foster youth and their birth relatives were now being monitored by the foster parents, adding a new and unclear responsibility to their child welfare role. According to some foster parents, video contact between children and their parents was easier to manage when there was a pre-existing positive relationship between themselves and the birth parents. Finally, foster parents reported finding it difficult to help babies and young children engage their parents during video calls and did not feel adequately prepared to support such visits.
Being cut off from direct contact with their children in foster care increased the worries of many birth parents, although most accepted the need to terminate face-to-face visits during the lockdown. Parents with young children worried the most, especially because it was more difficult to engage their children during virtual visits, and they especially missed the opportunity to be in physical contact with them. There were mixed reports by birth parents about the foster parent’s involvement in virtual visits, with some welcoming the opportunity to get to know the people caring for their children and others resenting the intrusion of the foster parents during the parent-child visits. Despite efforts by social workers and other professionals to help birth parents manage the changes in visitation during the pandemic, many birth parents were dissatisfied with the type or extent of support received.
According to respondents, maintaining contact with the birth family through virtual means was very important for most children. Foster youth who had better relationships with their birth families prior to the lockdown were viewed as having an easier time adjusting to virtual visits. Digital communication was found to be very familiar to many youth, especially those who were older, and it was reported that such communication normalized contact for them with their birth family. For some children, virtual contact with their parents while in the foster home helped them integrate these two aspects of their lives. However, digital contact was not universally positive for foster children, especially for those who had existing emotional problems or histories of conflict with their birth parents. Many respondents expressed worry about the impact of loss of physical contact between children and their birth parents, especially for young children, and how this consequence of virtual visits would impact the reunification plan.
In short, all respondents reported both positive and negative consequences of switching from face-to-face visits to virtual visits as a result of the pandemic lockdown. Regarding the role of virtual visits in the future, most saw this form of communication between children in foster care and their birth family as a valuable addition to, but not a substitution for, traditional face-to-face visitation.
Benefits and drawbacks of virtual visits in support of family reunification
The logistics of virtual communication
First and foremost, birth families and foster families must have access to the technology needed for virtual visits and the skills to use this technology. The Pew Research Center estimates that in the United States 29% of households with incomes less than $30,000 do not own a smartphone, 44% do not have home internet services, nearly half (46%) do not own computers and the majority (70%) do not own tablets (Anderson & Kumar, 2019). Even if a parent owns a computer, it must have a camera and microphone to be used for a video call. For those parents who have and must rely on their cell phones, adequate cell phone coverage is necessary. In rural areas, poor internet coverage may create additional barriers to having virtual visits.
While there is no direct research on screen size and virtual communication between parents and children, larger screens have been shown to be more effective in maintaining attention, increasing arousal (Reeves et al., 1999) and gathering information among participants (Dunaway & Soroka, 2019). These added benefits may allow for more meaningful contact between participants and allow parents and children using technology for virtual visits to feel more satisfied with the visit. Using cell phones for virtual visits can, however, result in the loss of details and subtleties due to screen size, (Kleiman & Barenholtz, 2020) and difficulties accommodating multiple participants at each end of the conversation. Finally, there can be challenges for the parties connecting to the software, navigating on the platform being used or staying connected during the video call which can lead to frustration for parents and children, as well as visitation supervisors for those cases requiring supervised visits,.
The technology used for virtual visits also creates some challenges. The feedback loop between parent and child is more limited during virtual visits than in face-to-face interactions. Not only is it difficult to maintain eye contact during a virtual visit due to the nature of the equipment (Bohannon et al., 2013), the lack of physical connection between a parent and child does not allow them to touch, hold, hug or smell each other, experiences that are especially important when developing or maintaining attachments or building trust (Cassidy, 2016).
Privacy is also an issue that needs to be considered. Creating privacy for virtual visits may be a challenge for some birth parents and foster families due to lack of space in their living environment or because there are other adults in the home or other children who need attention. Add to these challenges the possibility of homeschooling due to school closures during the pandemic (Sharfstein & Morphew, 2020) and it may be difficult for foster parents to find both time and space to have virtual visits in their homes.
In the United States, for parents who were having supervised visits prior to the pandemic, parent-child interactions were already being observed by a third party, typically by a trained monitor from a dedicated family supervision organization or by a child welfare worker. In the vast majority of cases, foster parents were not directly involved in supervision. When parent-child visitations had to be altered because of the pandemic, many foster parents were asked to monitor visits. Introduction of the foster parent as a facilitator or supervisor of visits can create additional privacy challenges for the birth parent/child/foster parent relationships (see Neil et al., 2020). Birth parents may be sensitive to foster parents having visual access to their homes and living circumstances. Foster parents may also be uncomfortable with birth family having visual access to their home and possible knowledge of where they live. And for children, having both the birth parent and foster parent present during the visit may create undue anxiety and undermine their sense of privacy and perhaps the nature and quality of the parent-child interaction. In addition, if sibling visits for children living in separate foster homes occur virtually, privacy issues emerge when foster parents obtain knowledge about the other siblings and their foster placements. Such information is typically viewed as confidential in juvenile dependency cases. Finally, privacy must also be ensured on the technology platforms used for virtual visits as juvenile dependency proceedings are confidential and children have the right to privacy in their visits with parents, siblings and other relatives (see for example, California Welfare and Institutions Code §16001.9 (a)(12)). In fact, problems with privacy on platforms such as Zoom have been noted during the current health crisis (Hodge, 2020).
Juvenile dependency cases often involve visitations between children and their siblings living elsewhere. At times, these siblings are with birth parents or relatives and at other times they are living in different foster homes. When siblings are separated, simultaneous video visits with all family members can be logistically challenging and communicatively chaotic because of sound delays, overlapping conversations, and other technological issues with multiple participants. Moreover, the typical activity of mutual play between siblings during face-to-face visits is very difficult during a virtual interaction. These problems can further undermine the meaningfulness of contact between siblings who are already suffering a loss due to removal from their parents, separation from each other, and other disruptions due to the pandemic. Complicating virtual sibling visits is the fact that they often involve multiple foster parents, which is likely to add to the communicative chaos as they attempt to support their foster child’s engagement with his/her siblings. In such cases, social workers may suggest separate virtual visits between siblings which add further complexity for foster parents in establishing an acceptable contact schedule with other families.
On the positive side, for all parties, virtual visits can require less planning for the parties and offer more flexibility than face to face visits (Barr, 2020). Neither the child, birth parent, foster parent or social worker needs to travel for the visits to occur. Moreover, the birth parent can use all of the resources they have in their home to engage their child (e.g., toys, books, stuffed animals) rather than having to bring these items to a visitation center. Additionally, if virtual visits are taking place in the foster home, children have the opportunity to share more information about their living environments with their biological parents which, in turn, may allow them to feel more connected to each other, even in their absence (Neil et al., 2020). For children who have difficulty tolerating longer visits, shorter visits can take place virtually, allowing for more frequent contact between parents and their children in foster care than is usually planned when visitation is primarily through face-to-face contact. Virtual visits can also ease anxiety for children who are reluctant to meet face-to-face with a parent because of past abuse; they can also ease anxiety for foster parents who may be concerned about how the child will be treated during a visit. Through virtual visits, the child has the opportunity to ease into seeing the parent, and the foster parent can lessen their concerns after seeing positive interactions between the child and the birth parent during the video call (Barr, 2020).
Child related factors in virtual communication
The child’s age is a factor in the ability to independently use and benefit from virtual communication with parents and other relatives. As previously noted, younger children are less likely than older children to have experience using smartphones, tablets, and computers, and therefore may require the assistance of foster parents, a social worker, or another support person to use these devices for purposes of parent-child visitations (Rideout & Robb, 2019). To benefit from the use of this kind of technology, adult scaffolding is necessary to help young children bridge the gap between the screen and real life (Connell et al., 2015). For example, foster parents or social workers support virtual communication for young children by their active involvement with the process, by reinforcing children’s orientation to and engagement of the birth parent, and by social referencing behavior (i.e., pointing out the birth parent’s words or actions) (Walden & Ogan, 1988). When adults provide this type of support, there are clear beneficial effects for children, including knowledge development, recognition of and responsiveness to parents, and maintenance of an existing parent-child relationship. This is true even for older infants and toddlers who are able to recognize a parent’s voice and face during a virtual visit, reinforcing the emotional/relational connection to them in the absence of physical contact. On the other hand, for children who were removed from parental care in the first 6 months of life, there is no evidence suggesting that virtual visits, independent of face-to-face contact, can promote the development of a reciprocal attachment between child and parent.
Children who are emotionally, cognitively, or physically impaired may also require assistance from others so they can participate in virtual visits with their parents and relatives. Additional challenges may present for children who can become dysregulated, especially those who have been affected by trauma (McLean, 2016), and for children who have attention deficit disorder, visual or auditory impairments or severe mental health issues. Children may be experiencing the added trauma of separation from parents due to the pandemic and SIP orders, have worries and concerns about their birth parent’s health or have increased anxiety themselves (Xie et al., 2020). For these children, if they can participate in the virtual visit at all, more active engagement and emotional support of a foster parent or visitation supervisor will be necessary.
In a review of the literature on the effects of digital contact on the well-being of children in care, Iyer et al. (2020) reported that older children and adolescents felt staying in contact by text, phone or social media with birth parents, siblings and friends was important to them. They found using these devices lacked the formality and structure of regularly scheduled, face-to-face visits, which allowed for a more natural, spontaneous, and family-like connection with birth relatives. Furthermore, regular digital contact with birth parents and other relatives helped reduce their feelings of isolation and increased a sense of connectedness and family bonding. In contrast, foster parents and social workers sometimes found the informality and immediacy of digital contact between youth and their birth parents to be a “nuisance” and resulted in concerns about excessive use of phones by youth as a means of staying in touch with birth relatives. These concerns are more likely when independent communication between foster youth and their birth family violates court ordered restrictions on the nature and frequency of their contact or when there are concerns that birth family contact without supervision could be destabilizing for youth, placing them and the foster placement at risk (Alford et al., 2019; MacDonald et al., 2017). Additionally, while older children may have the ability to operate devices independently, the foster parent, for safety reasons, must ensure the child’s access to an internet enabled device is monitored as appropriate to the child’s age (Farrukh et al., 2014).
Relationship dynamics and challenges with virtual visitations
While there are some activities a parent can still do with a child during a virtual visit, such as reading a book, playing a game or talking about day to day activities, during face-to-face visitation, parents also have opportunities to provide food or a bottle for a hungry child, change a child’s diaper or soiled clothes, hold, comfort or calm a child, and provide correction, redirection or praise for the child when needed. Many of these actions cannot be done by the birth parent during virtual visits or are more difficult to perform, reducing the opportunity to practice important parenting skills. This can limit the birth parent’s ability to develop and strengthen attunement to his or her child’s needs and provide for the child’s care, as well as interfere with the parent-child attachment bond. These limits can also make it more difficult for social workers to gauge the parent’s progress in achieving reunification goals.
Virtual visits may involve the assistance of the foster parent or a visitation supervisor. Foster parents must partner with birth parents when assistance is needed for these visits to be successful (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2019). As noted by McClure et al. (2018), caregivers provide scaffolding for young children to make virtual visits as close to face-to-face interactions as possible. Foster parents may encourage a child to kiss the screen, pretend to hug the parent or hand her or him an object, or organize to read a book or do an activity together with the birth parent by having the same props in both locations (McClure & Barr, 2017). This level of organization may take planning and certainly requires a highly cooperative, motivated, and involved foster parent. Communication between the foster parent and birth parent may also be used to improve eye contact during a video call between young children and their parents and to correct for delays inherent in video communication which can affect social contingency and reciprocity in the parent-child relationship. Foster parents can also help young children by narrating actions that do not occur on screen or that require visual information which is not available to the birth parent. While McClure and Barr (2017) provide many examples of the ways in which a caregiver can provide direction and instruction to both the child and the distant parent to improve the quality of the virtual visit, in the context of child welfare cases in which family reunification is the goal, there is a presumption that the foster parent is willing and highly motivated to facilitate such visitation and support the parent-child relationship. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Nonetheless, these kinds of behaviors can be easily learned by birth parents and visitation facilitators, including foster parents, if they are sufficiently motivated and provided with appropriate guidance.
Coordination between a foster parent and birth parent might include who will plan for the activities during the visit and how they will prepare for any items necessary to make the visit a success. They also must determine how they will manage technical problems including challenges getting onto a call, dropped calls, frozen screens or interruptions from other children or adults in the home. A dropped call or frozen screen could create challenges, especially for a child who is just mastering object constancy and, if not handled well, could increase the child’s anxiety.
On the positive side, foster parents, in interacting with a child in their care, can provide modeling for the birth parent in narrating the child’s behavior and scaffolding to make an interaction successful or suggest activities which the child has enjoyed while in care. In real time, the foster parent can provide suggestions or show the birth parent the child’s likes or dislikes. Furthermore, the birth parent can provide information about a child’s past preferences, how others in the birth family are doing, and/or verbally support the child’s placement and relationship with the foster parent (Birth and Foster Parent Partnership, 2020).
Challenges to successful virtual visits can occur, however, when the relationship between the foster parent and birth parent is tenuous or involves a history of hostility, or if no opportunity has been provided for the development of a positive working relationship. In such circumstances, birth parents and their children may feel inhibited in their communication, including the expression of affection or the sharing of memories that help them to maintain their bond. Hostility or conflict between the adults can also result in a feeling of divided loyalty for the foster child, leading to a belief that she/he must choose between the birth parent and foster parent. These kinds of challenges are similar to the difficulties that exist for divorced parents who are in conflict (Saini & Polak, 2018) and may be more likely to occur in kinship foster placements when there is a history of intra-familial conflict. Parents may try to manipulate the child or withhold information which essentially undermines the purpose of the video exchange (Ganong et al., 2012). In child welfare cases, social workers must assess the extent and quality of the relationship between birth family members and the foster parent, as well as the foster parent’s level of commitment to virtual visits and their support for reunification goals before requesting that they assume the responsibilities of visitation facilitator/supervisor. When there are concerns about their relationship history or the foster parent’s support for family reunification, case managers must assign the responsibility of facilitating or supervising the virtual visit to the case social worker or a trained monitor from a dedicated family supervision organization.
Even with reunification as a case goal, many parents still require supervision for visits with their children. As interaction in virtual visits must be facilitated for some children, and the opportunities for making independent parenting choices, such as providing for a child’s care or managing behavior problems are much more limited during this type of visit, a social worker or visitation supervisor may not have an opportunity to evaluate fully the birth parent’s parenting skills. If there is no visitation supervisor who is observing the virtual visit, but a facilitator is still required, a foster parent may have to act as both facilitator and supervisor. As noted previously, this can place the foster parent in an awkward position vis-à-vis the parent and undermine their otherwise cooperative working relationship. The foster parent may have to determine if a parent is capable of participating in the visit due to substance use, if a visit should be cancelled because a parent was late getting onto the video call, if intervention is necessary when a parent raises inappropriate topics or if a visit should be terminated because the child is too upset or the parent becomes abusive. These circumstances could create tension between the foster parent and the birth parent, undermining both their relationship and the reunification process.
If a visitation supervisor is participating in a virtual visit, he/she also may need to intervene if the foster parent is not maintaining a facilitative role in relation to the child’s interactions with the birth parent. This type of intervention may run the risk of disrupting the relationship between the foster parent and the social worker, a partnership which is also important for the child’s well-being and the stability of the placement (Denlinger & Dorius, 2018).
It is clear that there are many advantages and disadvantages to using virtual visitation in support of family reunification. However, there is no evidence to suggest that virtual communication can replace face-to-face visits between birth parents and their children, especially for fostering primary attachments between infants/toddlers and their birth parents. Of critical relevance for case planning, especially during times of SIP, is recognizing what information is gained and what is missed by sole or primary reliance on virtual communication as a means of complying with statutory requirements for parent-child visitation. In the next section, we address the implications of virtual communication for case planning in juvenile dependency cases.
Implications for case planning and implementation
In the United States, the Federal Title IV-E program requires states to make reasonable efforts to reunify children with their families if removed due to abuse or neglect (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2020). Juvenile dependency laws vary from state to state, including timeframes for providing reunification services. 3 In the state of California, for example, parents with children under the age of three who enter the child welfare system or parents who have a child who is part of a sibling group with a child under the age of three are entitled to receive a minimum of 6 months of reunification services. Parents of children older than three years are entitled to 12 months of reunification services. The time begins either 60 days after the child is placed in care, or from the date of the jurisdictional hearing, whichever is earlier. These are short time frames to ensure that children do not linger in foster care and that permanency plans can be developed and implemented without undue delay. Under certain circumstances, if a parent is making progress, timeframes for reunification services can be extended up to 24 months (California Welfare and Institutions Code §366.22). However, the court can terminate reunification services and set a hearing to terminate parental rights if a parent is not making progress toward case plan goals.
Reunification plans always provide for visits between parents and children. When the pandemic emerged, face-to-face visits were suspended in many jurisdictions, or significantly altered in their nature or frequency. In many cases, direct contact was replaced by virtual visits. However, it is unclear what, if any, changes have been made to case plans, how virtual visits are being implemented and utilized in assessing progress toward reunification goals, or if any training is being offered to social workers, foster families and birth parents in using virtual technology in support of reunification goals. How visits are currently being implemented and utilized is likely to vary county to county, state to state, and country to country.
Most reunification plans allow varied visitation lengths for different age groups but visits are often in the 1 to 2-hour range, at least once a month or more often (Worthington, 2019). As parents progress in their case plan, visits move from supervised to unsupervised and often increase in frequency and length, from shorter visits to longer ones including overnights in preparation for a child’s return to the parent. Virtual visits are likely to represent a significant departure from pre-pandemic parent-child interactions. Time frames for visits may need to be modified as research has shown the optimal time for video visits is 15 to 20 minutes, especially for young children (McClure & Barr, 2017). If the child welfare agency is not able to offer shorter but more frequent visits, birth parents may lose valuable time with their children, compromising the reunification process.
Modifications of case plans will likely be necessary as some birth parents will be adversely impacted by not having face-to-face contact and, as a result, have difficulty meeting their case plan goals within the statutory timeframe. This can occur for any number of reasons including: (a) limited parent motivation, participation or progress prior to the shelter in place order which continues following the order; (b) difficulties with technology, making virtual visits difficult or impossible; (c) a foster parent who is unwilling or unable to facilitate visits; and (d) case plan goals that do not lend themselves to virtual contact.
Especially for young children, shorter visits with greater frequency are more effective and this may require flexibility from both foster parents and birth parents (Barr, 2020). This flexibility may allow a parent to see the everyday activities in which the child is engaged and may be less disruptive for the foster family. However, if shorter visits are offered, consideration must be given to how these shorter visits translate into real life scenarios. Parents can do well in caregiving for brief periods but may have challenges when the time they spend with their child increases. Managing siblings in a face to face interaction is likely to be qualitatively different from the interactions that occur in virtual visits during which foster parents are acting as facilitators. Additionally, birth parents cannot participate in all parenting behaviors during virtual visits (e.g., physical comforting) and some of these behaviors are important to a parent’s case plan. Consequently, the reunification timeframe may need to be extended once shelter in place orders are lifted, not only to give birth parents more time to resolve previous parenting problems, but also to give social workers more time to assess the family’s progress toward reunification goals.
Case plans often involve moving from supervised visits to unsupervised visits. A parent who appears ready to move to unsupervised visits because short virtual visits have gone well, may not, in fact, be ready for the additional responsibilities involved in longer unsupervised contact. Moving too soon to unsupervised visits may undermine the parent’s progress or returning a child to a parent too early may result in a reunification failure. Additionally, if social workers are not supervising virtual visits, it will be more difficult to assess a parent’s progress toward their case plan goals.
If a case plan includes developing an attachment between a parent and child removed before the age of 6 months or maintaining an attachment for a child less than 3 years, visits without physical contact may not be sufficient to achieve case plan goals. Virtual visits may need to be more frequent in order to guard against a negative outcome purely on the basis of the mode of service. Finally, if the case plan includes a parent being able to manage multiple children, the ability to exercise these skills with virtual visitation when children are not occupying the same physical space will also make it difficult to evaluate how these skills translate into real life scenarios. Timeframes for reunification may also need to be extended to allow a parent to develop or practice these necessary skills.
For virtual visits to be successful, training of social workers, foster parents and birth parents may be necessary. Training programs for foster parents have been effective in decreasing placement disruptions (Price et al., 2008, Schoemaker et al., 2019) and improving a foster parent’s ability to work with children with disruptive behavior problems (Solomon et al., 2016). Recently, Mallette et al. (2020) examined the supports necessary for foster parents to be successful in coordinating their interactions with the social welfare system, the child in their care and with birth parents. Caregivers must know the rules and restrictions related to contact between parents and children in foster placement, know how to manage behavioral or medical challenges for a foster child in their care, understand how to develop a bond with their foster child and provide support to or be a mentor for a birth parent. What was not contemplated in pre-COVID training was the need for instructing foster parents in facilitating or supervising video visits between biological parents and their children in foster care. Recently in response to the pandemic and the need for virtual visits, Barr (2020) developed a training video for social workers which reviews the literature related to the effectiveness of “video chat” with children under 1 year old and provides some tips for foster parents and birth parents to make video visits successful.
Each family must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine what training is required. Social workers will need to assess the parties’ equipment requirements and access to the internet. An assessment of the relationship between the foster parent and birth parent is essential to determine if the foster parent is willing to support the virtual visits and if the relationship between the foster parent and birth parent is cooperative enough for virtual visits to be successful. Finally, an assessment of the practical aspects of virtual visits for each family must be evaluated including if visits are possible due to supervision needs of other children in the foster home, if there is enough space to ensure privacy for visits or if the logistics lend themselves to virtual sibling visits, as just some examples. Training may include how to connect to a video platform or troubleshoot connection challenges. It may also provide information to help foster parents and birth parents develop appropriate expectations for video visits versus face-to-face contact including: (a) the benefits of video calls; even with babies; (b) how to determine the best time for virtual visits; (c) how to prepare the child for a virtual visit; (d) how to manage connection problems while maintaining contact between the birth parent and the child; (e) how to engage jointly with each other to support children during a video call; (f) what kinds of props (books, toys, art supplies, snacks) to have available or what activities can be shared; (g) how to engage and maintain the child’s attention; (h) how to entice the child back to the call when his or her attention wanders; (i) how to understand the child’s behavior when he/she loses interest; (j) how to respond when the child seeks care or comfort from the foster parent; and (k) how to manage differences in expectations or conflicts between the adults that might arise related to scheduling or behavior during the visits.
Conclusions and future directions
In response to the pandemic, child welfare organizations throughout the world have been forced to rethink the way in which they can support reunification plans for children in foster care. In many cases, they have switched from traditional face-to-face visitations between foster children, their birth parents and other relatives to various forms of virtual visitation as an alternative way of supporting the parent-child relationship. Virtual visitation has been shown to be extremely useful in helping children maintain contact with their birth family and for birth parents to be able to practice some types of caregiving behavior that are part of the reunification plan. At the same time, there is sufficient data to conclude that while virtual visits can effectively supplement face-to-face visits, they should not be viewed or used as a replacement for them. The time spent in virtual visits cannot be equated with the time spent in face-to-face contact. The types of parenting skills that can be supported in virtual visits are more limited than those in face-to-face visits. Furthermore, the limitations inherent in virtual visits make it more difficult to foster or maintain a healthy, secure parent-child attachment, and the benefits of this type of visitation are closely tied to the active involvement of a positively motivated caregiver, a responsibility that is likely to fall on the shoulders of foster parents.
Because every child welfare case is unique, the way in which alternative reunification strategies are implemented must be evaluated on a case by case basis. Birth parents must be given reasonable time and support to meet established reunification goals, without undue pressure from statutory timeframes that are no longer realistic because of the inability to provide appropriate supports. At the same time, children’s well-being must also be assessed in terms of the likelihood that reunification remains a realistic goal. Prolonging a decision about reunification indefinitely does not serve the needs of foster children, since the longer children are in care the less likelihood of successful reunification with the birth family (Mallon & Hess, 2005). Although shifting to virtual visitation is unavoidable during times such as these, and certainly is better than not having visitation at all, it remains unclear how children and their birth parents will cope with only sustained virtual visits, without the opportunity to interact directly with one another.
Child welfare organizations are in unchartered waters, as are foster parents, birth parents, and foster children. The pandemic has required everyone to learn new ways of interacting, with equipment and technology platforms with which they may not be especially familiar. Yet one thing we have already learned from virtual visitation is that it is a relatively easy form of communication to learn and implement, allows for flexibility in scheduling and has beneficial effects for most children and their birth families. In fact, the benefits of virtual visits are such that going forward children and their birth families would be well served to ensure that reunification plans, when appropriate, incorporate not only regular face-to-face contact, but also opportunities for reasonably frequent virtual contact.
Such plans, however, will require assessment of the availability of technology devices for birth families and foster families, as well as their knowledge in using various visual communication platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, and Skype. For those unfamiliar with these platforms, appropriate training will be necessary to ensure successful virtual visitations. Furthermore, additional training and guidance will be necessary related to: (a) fostering appropriate expectations about the role of virtual visits compared to face-to-face visits; (b) clarifying the parties’ roles and responsibilities during virtual visits, especially for foster parents who may be expected to assume new responsibilities as an active and positively motivated facilitator of the parent-child relationship; (c) training for foster parents regarding how to engage in scaffolding behavior that maximizes the benefits of virtual visits for children and their birth parents; (d) guidelines for social workers in how to gauge progress toward reunification goals based upon virtual visits; and (e) guidelines on how to integrate virtual visits with face-to-face visits, not only during times of SIP, but also as a regular and ongoing part of the reunification process in the future. Until further research is conducted, we will not know the extent to which SIP orders and the use of virtual visitation in place of face-to-face contact for parents and their children in foster care have affected case planning and the parents’ ability to meet reunification goals within statutory timeframes.
While SIP orders have placed additional burdens on families and the child welfare system, we should also consider this an opportunity to strengthen the partnership between social workers, birth parents and foster families. With appropriate training, virtual visits can be used as a valuable adjunct to face-to-face visits, offering more contact between birth parents and their children, supporting the enhancement of parenting skills and fostering stronger and healthier parent-child bonds.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge John Passalacqua, Esq. and David Meyers, Esq., attorneys at Dependency Legal Services, Rocklin, CA for first bringing to our attention some of issues and concerns being discussed by judicial, legal, and child welfare authorities regarding the role of virtual visitation in support of family reunification during the pandemic.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
