Identify data sources to explore your state’s system of foster and adoptive parent licensing, recruitment, and retention.

Learn how to support state planning and implementation of the reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS), which is required by the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (P.L. 113–183), to help children and youth in foster care experience normal childhood and adolescent activities. 

Recorded webinar of youth with lived expertise and child and family serving agency leaders discussing strategies to support meaningful youth engagement and integrating family and youth voices at individual, practice, and system levels.

Illustrates the four thematic pillars necessary for organizational capacity supporting engagement with young people currently and formerly in foster care. Each of the four segments succinctly defines an element of organizational capacity building for youth engagement.

This guide is designed to support administrative leaders in states and other jurisdictions in using data to assess and identify ways to improve their service array.

Explore tips and strategies to effectively engage and sustain the involvement of families and youth at the agency level. 

This “Service Array Data Inventory Sample Worksheet” (Worksheet) is a companion tool to A Data-Driven Approach to Service Array Guide developed by the Capacity Building Center for States. To use the Worksheet, you can print it out and fill in the blank squares, or use the questions as a guide.

Find the eligibility requirements of the Children’s Justice Act Grant and the roles and responsibilities of Grantees.

Learn about State Liaison Officers, who they are, their roles, responsibilities, and the Center for States resources available to them.

Desiree is an alumna of the foster care system. She lived with the same foster care family for 14 years. She entered foster care with three of her siblings, and wants to use her experiences growing up in foster care to make a difference for those still in the system.

Learn the characteristics and results that describe the right people to engage youth and get guidance for recruiting, hiring, and retaining these employees.

Examine a five-step framework that helps organizations promote youth engagement in normalcy conversations about the youth’s own care.

Learn about adolescent brain development, trauma-responsive care, and the importance of normalcy.

Explore this tip sheet to learn about child welfare agency and court responsibilities related to APPLA provisions and strategies to achieve permanency.

Learn how to build capacity in each of four component areas to promote a culture and climate that encourages youth engagement at all levels of an organization.