​Learn from people with lived experience about the impact of kinship care on children in the child welfare system.

Use this discussion guide with the CWVE 2022 videos to view a description of each topic, access individual reflection questions to facilitate personal, on-demand learning, and explore conversation starters and team activities with child welfare staff and collaborative partners.   

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.

Learn about the value of kinship placements when children and youth must live outside their birth parents’ homes. 

Discover services and resources aimed at the needs of expecting and parenting teens in child welfare. 

Explore additional resources aimed at the needs of expecting and parenting teens in child welfare.

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

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

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

Explore the various aspects of the importance of normalcy for children and youth in care.

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

This video highlights the story of a program manager and lead navigator for the Montana Kinship Navigator Program and how her own experience caring for a nephew helps her better support and connect with kinship caregivers and families.

Learn about the challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) families involved with the child welfare system and ways to help them.

Discover how parent partner programs support family reunification by guiding and motivating parents into constructive interactions with the child welfare system and courts.

Explore innovative programs and strategies that child welfare professionals can use to support reunification and emphasize caregiver and parent voice.