This handout is part of the series, “Perspectives on Normalcy: Videos and Discussion Questions.” It is designed to facilitate discussion about the issues raised in the video, “Kinship Adoption: You Get a Call, ‘Do You Want These Kids?’”

Hear about the challenges and experiences of an adoptive family and how they created belonging, healthy development, and normal experiences.

Explore existing frameworks for protective capacities and protective factors and learn how to use them together for better prevention.

Review the protective capacities and protective factors frameworks used to assess, intervene, and serve families.

Browse a list of organizations that offer training activities with defined learning objectives, including self-paced e-learnings, webinars, or videos.

Explore insights on using protective capacities and protective factors to build a continuum of practice that extends from safety to strength-building. 

Find meaningful and actionable connections among your agency’s strategic planning, review, and CQI efforts using this toolkit.

​​Examine how implementation science principles can be applied to decisions about staging and scaling up new programs and practices at a child welfare agency.​ 

Explore the key components of engaging youth and families in individual permanency planning.

Learn a research-informed framework for agencies to explore implementation of CQI systems across seven areas, including leadership support and modeling, staff and stakeholder engagement, communication, administrative structure, use of quality data, case record review process, and application of CQI findings.

Explore the benefits of and strategies for recruiting and integrating people with lived expertise into the child welfare workforce.

Explore how caseworkers, supervisors, and stakeholders can use data and feedback to improve child welfare practice. 

Explore how child welfare leaders and decision makers can communicate data effectively. 

Support agency staff in the authentic engagement of youth and families in individual permanency planning processes.

The journeys of children, youth, and families in child welfare are seldom a straight line. Typically, there are highs and lows and winding paths in between