Project activities continued to be carried out and services delivered based on a multidisciplinary, multi-organizational team, consisting of social work, legal, mental health and nursing professionals from subcontracting organizations. These professionals provide consultation, technical assistance and training to case managers in other collaborating organizations, and direct services, including life planning, group and individual therapy to prepare clients for life planning, transitional kinship care services and family-based foster care, to referred clients.
Family Ties Project operates as a multidisciplinary team whose members span the subcontractor organizationsa fulltime social worker-life planning specialist located at Family Ties Project, a University of the District of Columbia (UDC), David A. Clarke School of Law attorney, an art therapist employed at Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care, Inc., and a full-time case manager at Sasha Bruce Youthwork who provides kinship care services.
Sasha Bruce Youthwork provides emergency shelter, individual and family counseling, educational services and administrative advocacy. It also offers life skills training, long-term residential placement, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS prevention education, parenting skills training, therapeutic recreational activities and home-based services. Through this subcontract, Family Ties Project clients have access to an array of services to ease the transition of families from HIV-related services when those services are no longer available due to the death of the HIV-infected parent, and to maintain their continuity of care.
Through Pediatric Care, Inc. clients may participate in an extended after school program with dinner. Available services include counseling, individual and group art therapy, age and gender based support groups, tutoring and enrichment activities. These specialized services help client families with issues of disclosure, grief and life planning.
In addition to the extraordinary difficulties parents with HIV/AIDS face as they plan for the future care of their children, District families considering life-planning options are hampered by the absence of a standby guardianship law. Because this important alternative to preventing crises in guardianship has yet to be enacted in the District, the Family Ties Project relies on a range of other options, including adoption, third party custody, joint custody with custodial parent, custody with other biological parent and, as a last resort, Department of Human Services custody. In addition to working with clients on child custody issues, the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law HIV/AIDS legal clinic assists clients with other life planning optionsmedical consent authorization for children, preparation and probate of wills, living wills and advanced directives, child support and obtaining entitlements.