Hear a summary of the 2022 CWVE themes and learn strategies for moving forward with prioritizing lived expertise in child welfare. 

Explore ways to increase commitment to partnering with people with lived expertise in child welfare.

Emphasizes the necessity of strong community supports to create a secure and stable environment for a new kinship family. In this video, a grandparent discusses moving across the country to ensure her grandchildren could see their parents.

Explores the task of developing plans to stage and scale up an intervention for implementation on a larger scale in a sustainable way.

Explores the tasks of routine monitoring and checking in with identified benchmarks or short-term outcomes.

The video highlights the story of a kinship caregiver and how becoming a licensed foster parent working with social services and her local child welfare agency resulted in better support and resources.

See how listening and relatability helped build trust between a youth and his attorney.

Underscores the importance of consistency and encouragement in trusting relationships. A Fostering Success peer mentor gave impactful advice to the youth she mentored: Stop listening to the people who don’t believe in you.

Discover strategies to effectively integrate people with lived expertise into the child welfare workforce.

Reveals the complexity of family dynamics through the experiences of Shary, a kinship parent caring for her niece, Brianna, and grandson, Random. In the first digital story, Brianna seeks to reconnect the pieces in her family puzzle. The second digital story highlights Random's unflappable resilience despite medical challenges.

Highlights the importance of recognizing the foster family as an extension of a child’s biological family and the role of effective communication between caregivers and biological family members. This video shares the experience of one caregiver who found that successful collaboration with biological family members, along with agency assistance to promote family engagement, proved effective for family reunification.

Hear from a family about the challenges of dealing with an autism diagnosis and other issues while navigating the child welfare system.

Demonstrates how showing up and listening are foundational to developing a nourishing relationship with youth. A young woman describes the constant support she and her family received from a social worker as she evolved from a youth into a teen mom and an advocate.

Recorded webinar of youth with lived expertise and child and family serving agency leaders discussing strategies to support meaningful youth engagement and integrating family and youth voices at individual, practice, and system levels.

Addresses motivations for becoming a kinship parent and the importance of having agency guidance and support to navigate shifting family roles and dynamics. This video presents one family's transition from kinship care to adoption, and highlights resources that contributed to their success and their ability to provide permanency for their adoptive daughter.