Resource Library

The Center for States designs products, services, and learning experiences to increase understanding and awareness, and build knowledge and skills. The Center focuses its attention on developing products and resources on several core organizational and practice topics.

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The Center for States provides research assistance and responds to information requests on building capacity in child welfare.

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Showing 76 - 90 of 225 resources
Video

Learn about the value of kinship placements when children and youth must live outside their birth parents’ homes. 

Publication Year 2022
Video

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.

Publication Year 2021
PDF

See strategies and examples for partnering with faith-based communities and leaders on behalf of children and youth in foster care waiting to be adopted.

Publication Year 2019
PDF

Learn how leveraging NGO connections in the community can help child welfare systems be more flexible and adaptable in achieving program goals.

Publication Year 2019
PDF

Get ideas for working with community foundations, endowments, and charitable trusts to improve outcomes for children and youth.

Publication Year 2019
Video

Explore the process of transitioning to a prevention-focused child welfare system from several perspectives, including those of a mother and son with lived experience and leaders who set the tone and direction for putting families at the center of child welfare work.

Publication Year 2021
Webinar

Provides an overview of resources and strategies to enhance approaches for providing financial capability training for youth who are transitioning out of foster care. 

Publication Year 2015
PDF

Identify data sources to explore your state’s system of foster and adoptive parent licensing, recruitment, and retention.

Publication Year 2023
Video

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.

Publication Year 2018
Video

Gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of effective collaboration and how to avoid pitfalls when implementing partnerships for primary prevention.

Publication Year 2021
PDF

Learn to facilitate a normalcy conversation and to promote normal and developmentally appropriate experiences for youth in foster care.

Publication Year 2017
PDF

Examine a five-step framework that helps organizations promote youth engagement in normalcy conversations about the youth’s own care.

Publication Year 2017
PDF

Explore the various aspects of the importance of normalcy for children and youth in care.

Publication Year 2016
Video

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.

Publication Year 2022
Webinar

Learn about the challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) families involved with the child welfare system and ways to help them.

Publication Year 2016