Explore the practical application of implementation science in child welfare.

This workbook and this video series are part of a collection of resources designed to help child welfare agency leaders, managers, and teams select, adapt, or design an intervention to address an identified problem. Use this workbook to further your understanding of concepts and prepare to move learning into action with your team.

Gather your staff to watch the “Deciding What to Implement to Achieve Successful Change” webinar to learn about how a structured approach to selecting an effective intervention can help your agency evaluate solutions to identified problems or needs and achieve goals for change. Then, use this guide to facilitate discussions and lead your team to move learning into action.

Provides an overview of essential functions for conducting usability testing where needed, determining the need for piloting a new program or intervention, and planning to stage and scale up implementation of a new program or intervention.

Explore the Center’s Focused Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Services training curriculum and learn more about how it can be used to support a team’s CQI goals.

Read recent research on child welfare workforce management, including recruitment and retention, professional development, and organizational culture.

Learn about how Jamall reunified with family members and enjoyed family cookouts and holidays with the help of Jennifer and the Family Finder program through Kinnect Ohio.

Exhibits the effect of committed caregivers throughout the process of foster parenting to adoption and demonstrates the power of strong families in promoting positive outcomes and permanency for children. In this video, an adoptive parent shares her reflections on her relationship with her daughter on the day of her adoption.

Addresses the importance of being open to agency support and resources and the necessity of self-care in working through family transitions and meeting family needs. In this video, a kinship parent caring for her niece's children reflects on her family's strategies for raising children who have experienced trauma and the resources that enabled them to become effective kinship caregivers.

Addresses the importance of being open to agency supports and the necessity of self-care in working through family transitions. In this set of digital stories, Jammie, a kinship parent caring for her niece's children, reflects on family connections and supportive services.

Listen to a youth support partner tell her story of living in kinship care with her grandmother and being reunified with her mother. She discusses the difficulties during her time in care and the system support that might have helped to promote a better relationship with her mother. As a mentor, she helps youth heal from trauma and use their voice in positive ways.

This video highlights the story of a foster care specialist and how her experience with her grandparents’ care helps her support and guide kinship caregivers.

Highlights the significant impact agency staff have on the kinship and foster parent experience and in helping families serve as a resource for the birth families of the children in their care. This video presents one family's story of becoming a kinship resource and how support from their foster care specialist guided their decision.

Demonstrates the benefits and challenges of serving as a kinship/foster parent and supporting and collaborating with children's biological parents. This video highlights one caregiver's decision to foster and adopt her son and become a kinship caregiver to his younger sibling. She discusses how she maintained a close, supportive relationship with their biological mother and how they ultimately created a united, blended family.

Underscores the importance of community connections and ongoing supports to child and family well-being. In this set of digital stories, a grandmother, Joan, promotes the idea of “surround-sound parenting” for her adopted grandson, Chad.