Resource Library

The Center for States designs products, services, and learning experiences to increase understanding and awareness, and build knowledge and skills. The Center focuses its attention on developing products and resources on several core organizational and practice topics.

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The Center for States provides research assistance and responds to information requests on building capacity in child welfare.

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Showing 61 - 75 of 191 resources
Video

Presents strategies for building a systemwide organizational culture that promotes working collaboratively to improve service array.

Publication Year 2019
Video

Learn about Dezzie’s experience bonding with her newborn while embracing parenting classes and other agency supports in her journey to be reunified with her daughter.

Publication Year 2022
Video

Tells the story of the relationship, initially forged over a shared meal, between a youth and her CASA worker. The CASA worker’s advocacy for concrete supports to meet the youth’s needs helped grow the trust in their relationship.

Publication Year 2021
Video

Highlights the beneficial role of agency support and encouragement to caregivers in ensuring effective foster parenting and successful reunification measures. In this video, a foster parent discusses the importance of communication and trust between caregivers and biological family members, along with agency training and resources, for successful reunification.

Publication Year 2021
PDF

Examine new software and technology innovations, which provide better, more integrated services and cut costs for states and jurisdictions.

Publication Year 2016
Podcast

This podcast, 'Supporting Kinship Caregivers Part 1', is the first of a two-part series showcasing successful examples of kinship navigator programs connecting kinship families with available services.

Publication Year 2021
Podcast

Listen to members of the Iowa Department of Human Services, along with Children & Families of Iowa, who helped institute and expand the State's parent partner program.

Publication Year 2021
Webinar

Available on CapLEARN; registration required.

Provides an overview of the Family Empowerment and Leadership Academy (FELA), a learning experience designed to assist States in building their system capacity to involve family leaders at all levels of agency child welfare administration and practice.

Publication Year 2016
Podcast

This episode features the lessons learned and experiences gained through the YMCA Families United Family Group Conferencing Program, a recipient of a 2015 Children's Bureau grant within the Building the Evidence for Family Group Decision-Making in Child Welfare discretionary grant cluster.

Publication Year 2021
Webinar

Provides an overview of resources and strategies to enhance approaches for providing financial capability training for youth who are transitioning out of foster care. 

Publication Year 2015
Video

Watch this recorded webcast to learn what it means to build a complete system of foster care as a support to families, not a substitute for parents.

Publication Year 2020
Podcast

In this introduction to the podcast series How We Partner With the Community to Improve Service Options, agency leaders talk about the changing culture of their organizations. Leaders from Kentucky discuss their Child Welfare Transformation initiative, three transformational goals, and culture of safety.

Publication Year 2019
Video

Emphasizes the importance of community and caseworker support in having the resources needed to promote family well-being, particularly when caring for children with special needs. This video highlights the perspective of a kinship caregiver who is an Athabaskan native teaching her grandchildren the Navajo culture and community traditions and passing down her grandparents' stories.

Publication Year 2018
PDF

Learn how to conduct a total cost of ownership analysis and see how various system development choices can influence included costs.

Publication Year 2016
PDF

Learn to facilitate a normalcy conversation and to promote normal and developmentally appropriate experiences for youth in foster care.

Publication Year 2017