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 28 resources
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Highlights some of the factors that motivate caregivers to work through challenges and to provide permanency to children in foster care. In this video, a foster parent discusses lessons learned from fostering over 50 children in her home.

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This video raises key motivating factors for caregivers, including the need for strong family and community support networks.

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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.

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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.

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Presents how to develop a plan to have a blueprint for all evaluation activities and to clearly outline timeframes, roles, and responsibilities for those activities.

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Explores the task of developing a plan to implement the process and methods outlined in the evaluation plan, gather the information and data needed, and determine the effect of the process or program being evaluated.

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Provides an overview of essential functions, or tasks, to monitor and evaluate the implementation and impact of a program or other intervention and apply findings over the course of the change and implementation process.

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Explores the tasks of identifying fidelity measures from other sources or developing new ones, developing the tools and protocols, and then using data to make improvements.

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Explores the tasks of determining the “big picture” objectives and scope of evaluation efforts and assessing the agency’s capacity to conduct rigorous fidelity assessments, formative evaluations, or summative evaluations.

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Describes the task of analyzing costs to satisfy funding requirements; support decision-making around intervention selection, testing, and piloting; and plan for scaling up and sustainability.

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Presents how teams can develop a visual logic model that shows inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes needed for the evaluation plan in a structured format to guide the work.

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Examines the tasks of sharing findings and recommendations to inform stakeholders of the implementation progress, guide decision-making about the future of the intervention, support advocating for resources, and expand the knowledge base.