Listen to a judge and a child welfare agency leader discuss the challenges, achievements, and strategies of the Tompkins County Family Treatment Court. This longstanding collaboration between the child welfare, substance use treatment, and judicial systems has been steadily growing its Family Treatment Court Team and improving outcomes for families since 2001.

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.

Access strategies to better understand and implement the family engagement requirements of the FFPSA.

Learn solid strategies for understanding and implementing the trauma-informed care provisions of the FFPSA.

Develop a better understanding of customized congregate care and learn about implementing the FFPSA provisions in congregate care QRTP assessment.

Get informed about creating normalcy for LGBTQ children and youth in foster care and browse relevant examples.

Listen to child welfare agency leaders in the District of Columbia, service providers, partners in community collaboratives, and sister agencies talk about how they coordinate service planning and delivery, are culturally responsive to the community, and provide seamless services to families.

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

Listen to child welfare agency leaders in the District of Columbia talk about how they work with partners to use their different data lenses to understand the needs of families and to structure a set of services to best meet the full spectrum of needs. In Kentucky, child welfare agency leaders describe the process of finding the story behind the numbers to transform their system.

Highlights the advocacy work of state and regional youth leadership councils. Two paid regional and state youth specialists and the Texas Director for Transitional Living Services describe how including youth voice by providing them a “seat at the table” at the state capital enhances the child welfare system. All three discuss the rewards and personal impact of their work.

This video is a part of the Empowering Caregivers, Strengthening Families Video Series. It demonstrates key aspects of agency support to caregivers, including the importance of quality personal contact, training, and resources to empower caregivers through the process of moving from foster parenting to adoption.

Learn about quality contacts, why they are important, and how an agency can successfully implement them.

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.

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.

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.