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 1 - 15 of 53 resources
Video

Explore the supportive relationship between a youth and her attorney.

Video

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.

PDF

Use this guide for tips, and strategies concerning the critical role leadership plays in creating and sustaining positive organizational culture.

Video

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.

Webinar

Explore how child welfare professionals and organizations can build capacity for implementing the reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS) for children and youth in foster care. 

Infographic

Browse the themes and key takeaways from the How We Partner With the Community to Improve Service Options podcast series.

PDF

Access strategies to better understand and implement the family engagement requirements of the FFPSA.

Video

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.

PDF

Learn about quality contacts, why they are important, and how an agency can successfully implement them.

Video

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.

Video

Watch this recorded webcast to learn what it means to build a complete system of foster care as a support to families, not a substitute for parents.

PDF

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

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.

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.

PDF

Learn how to create an agency organizational culture that is inclusive and knowledgeable about the unique needs of LGBTQ children, youth, and families.