This video highlights the story of a program manager and lead navigator for the Montana Kinship Navigator Program and how her own experience caring for a nephew helps her better support and connect with kinship caregivers and families.

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.

Explore additional resources to learn how child welfare organizations can create equity in the workforce. 

Watch the Change and Implementation in Practice: Overview video to learn how key steps, tasks, and concepts fit together to support your agency’s change initiatives. 

Listen to an attorney and a parent ally, both partners with Washington State’s child welfare system, explain how parent partner programs are essential to prevention services.

Listen to Indiana’s child welfare partners talk about making the shift to an upstream approach to prevention services possible in this short podcast. 

Use this discussion guide with the CWVE 2021 videos to access a description of each topic, individual reflection questions to facilitate personal, on-demand learning, and conversation starters and team activities for child welfare staff and collaborative partners.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

Demonstrates the power of positive caregiver perspective alongside child welfare agency encouragement and support. In this video, caregivers share the concerns they had about becoming foster parents and discuss the resources that helped them become committed and effective foster parents.

Emphasizes the need for agency assistance and openness toward creative therapeutic services such as music lessons and highlights the need for a strong caregiver support group. This video shares one caregiver’s positive experience working with older youth with special needs in therapeutic foster care.

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 agency resources, such as caregiver support groups and specialized training, to equip caregivers to work successfully with children and youth who have severe therapeutic needs. This video highlights a therapeutic foster parent's belief that effective advocacy relies on agency resources and training as well as community support.