This National Foster Care Month (NFCM) event explores how agencies can partner with young people in the foster care system to build strong, supportive networks and achieve relational permanency.

Learn strategies to address the mental health needs of children, young people, and families.

Learn sound methods for integrating a focus on race equity in data analysis and CQI. 

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

Learn how Anntesha’s experience as a child living with her grandparents and later in foster care influenced her to become a relative caregiver to her niece and nephew and work as a kinship navigator. 

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 Catherine’s journey recovering from trauma and addiction to be successfully reunified with her daughter.

Explore ways that jurisdictions can integrate strategies to promote equity in continuous quality improvement (CQI) and evaluation efforts. 

Watch this video to learn how community-based partnerships strengthen families and see what jurisdictions are doing to build lines of collaboration and trust.

Explore a family-focused program that embodies many of the changes that Kentucky wants to see throughout its child welfare system in this podcast. The START, program demonstrates a shift in organizational culture to focus on family and serves as an example of a truly collaborative team that uses early intervention and a shared decision-making model to work with families.

Learn a research-informed framework for agencies to explore implementation of CQI systems across seven areas, including leadership support and modeling, staff and stakeholder engagement, communication, administrative structure, use of quality data, case record review process, and application of CQI findings.

Learn effective strategies to collect, analyze, and use data related to caseworker visits.

Shares Stephen’s story about being a community-based provider and policymaker in Florida, the need for laws that empower caregiver decision-making, creating Florida’s reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS), and the effect RPPS and normalcy laws can have on foster care.

This handout is part of the series, “Perspectives on Normalcy: Videos and Discussion Questions.” It is designed to facilitate discussion about the issues raised in the video, “Community-Based Provider: Empowering Caregiver Decision-Making.” 

Use the template and instructions provided to develop parent partner program manuals.