The Center for States’ virtual Exhibit Hall booth features several products that focus on workforce development, including a variety of publications, videos, and learning experiences to help agencies foster healthy and supportive environments for child welfare professionals.

The Power of Feedback: Being a Vocal Participant in the Process, Elevating the Voices of the Workforce, Children, Youth, Families, and Communities Presentation

This session is designed to explore strategies for creating an organizational culture that values feedback and incentivizes learning from data and evidence. The session highlights the importance of including the perspectives of the workforce and children, youth, and families, all of whom have an important stake in evaluation and continuous quality improvement.

Becoming a Workforce of Everyday Scientists: Frontline Staff in the Legal Community Legal Presentation

Becoming a Workforce of Everyday Scientists: Frontline Staff in Agencies and Tribes

How Do We Know What Works? Challenges and Opportunities for Building Evidence for Leaders and Decision Makers examines evidence-based practice from the point of view of leaders and managers, who must process information about what works or not, decide if it is credible and is having the intended effect, and assess the implications of their decision at every level of the organization. 

This session explores how research, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement (CQI) efforts can help you strengthen practice to achieve a common goal of all child welfare professionals: becoming more effective in your work and being better able to ensure that children are safe, in healthy and intact families, and thriving.

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

Get guidance for completing the CQI self-assessment instrument, see suggested sources for local assessment data, and learn to rate assessment results.

Learn about applications that can make information gathering more efficient, increase useful data, and help you better understand those you serve. 

Explore and reflect on the impact of, and opportunities to improve, assessment and decision-making processes. 

Explore how having access to the right information at the right time can improve assessment and decision-making at the child/family level, and how aggregate data can be used to support system improvements. 

Learn how domestic violence and child maltreatment affect families and read about the risks, impacts, protective efforts, and other related topics.

Find information about using collaborative practices and models across human service systems to better serve families dealing with co-occurring issues.

Get the basics on general practice for agency interventions, including screening, documenting descriptions of abuse and protective efforts, and evaluating risk.