This video tells the story of how a family court judge in Hancock County, Mississippi, works with families and stakeholders to support reunification through a trauma-informed, family-centered approach.

Frankie is 14 years old and lives with his sister, brothers, and moms. He and his sister were adopted when they were 2 years old and 4 years old, respectively. He loves spending time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins and loves being part of a big family.

Learn about negotiating boundaries, communication, support, and normalcy from a young person formally in foster care and her adoptive parents.

Explore the supportive relationship between a youth and her attorney.

Highlights the role agency resources and family support can play in helping kinship families face challenges. This video discusses an aunt's decision to become a full-time caregiver for her niece and her niece's daughter, and the importance home visits played in the transition.

Reveals how advocating for youth makes a difference in system change and in the advocates’ own lives. The Director of Policy and Advocacy at NMCAN and a youth advocate talk about their shared experience in testifying as expert witnesses for state legislative committees and how it created a strong bond between them.

This video highlights the story of a therapeutic foster care social worker in North Carolina and how her own experience in kinship care helps her connect with kinship caregivers and engage families.

This publication looks at buzzwords in the context of words or phrases commonly used in child welfare reporting and documentation that can be subjective or carry negative connotations, and offers strategies to minimize their negative impact.

Buzzwords: Moving to Behavioral Descriptors doodle video is a short, animated video that follows a child involved in a child welfare investigation. The video describes what buzzwords are and illustrates the impact they can have on children and families. It also demonstrates how to recognize buzzwords and offers strategies for transforming buzzwords into objective, behavior-based descriptors.

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.

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.

This tool is a role-playing activity, designed to help child welfare workers and supervisors become more familiar with the process of recognizing and translating buzzwords into descriptive language.

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.

Emphasizes the importance of community and caseworker support in having the resources needed to promote family well-being, particularly when caring for children with special needs. This video highlights the perspective of a kinship caregiver who is an Athabaskan native teaching her grandchildren the Navajo culture and community traditions and passing down her grandparents' stories.