In January 2005, as part of child welfare reform in Wayne County, a team comprised of Department of Human Services (DHS) managers, DHS front line staff, foster parents, and private agency staff was charged with developing a child-centered, neighborhood-based foster care placement system.

Drawing on the principles of Family to Family, the team began by establishing priorities for safe, stable out-of-home placements when children could not be maintained safely with birth families. These priorities align fully with the DHS's child welfare reform in Michigan, emphasizing:

• Placing children with suitable relatives, or if no suitable relatives are available or able, with others familiar to the children (i.e., fictive kin).
• Keeping siblings together.
• Maintaining children in their own neighborhoods and schools.
• Making the first placement the best, most stable placement possible.

The new foster care placement system developed by this team is now being piloted in Wayne County. The Child Placement Network (CPN) includes tools that permit an enhanced up-front inventory of children's needs, and a match between those needs and a list of foster homes serving Wayne County. The match is made based on data provided by child placing agencies about the characteristics and capabilities of their foster homes. All child placing agencies that provide services to Wayne County families are part of the placement network.