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.

If you are interested in our series and learning experiences, please use our search bar or explore our topics.

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Library and Information Services

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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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Learn how we can help your agency build the capacity to thrive.

Email: capacityinfo@icfi.com 
Phone: 1.844.222.0272

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Showing 1 - 15 of 28 resources
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Frankie is 14 years old and lives with his sister, brothers, and moms. He and his sister were adopted when they were 2 years old and 4 years old, respectively. He loves spending time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins and loves being part of a big family.

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Learn about negotiating boundaries, communication, support, and normalcy from a young person formally in foster care and her adoptive parents.

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Shares Stephen’s story about being a community-based provider and policymaker in Florida, the need for laws that empower caregiver decision-making, creating Florida’s reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS), and the effect RPPS and normalcy laws can have on foster care.

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Examines why teams should research possible intervention options, how to look for a wide variety of potential options, and what supporting evidence to look for in researching possible solutions.

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Explores how teams can assess an intervention to understand the potential for success with the target population; the fit with the system, agency, and context; and the capacity needed to implement it.

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Presents how teams can determine whether there is sufficient information about an intervention to be clear and easy to explain, useable (intervention has operational definitions and fidelity process or performance assessments), and in alignment with agency principles and values.

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Examines how teams can use a structured approach to determine if an existing intervention with adaptations meets agency needs or if teams need to design a new one.

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Describes how teams define the intervention by stating the purpose, goals, and guiding principles; identifying core components and how they align; and then further operationalizing after getting proposal approval.

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Presents how to develop a proposal by clearly explaining the intervention to establish a common understanding among stakeholders, and to support communication and decision-making.

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Explores how teams can operationalize core components to ensure the intervention meets key criteria, is based on research evidence, and has enough information for teams to carry it out in practice and to measure the results.

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Reviews the final tasks of adapting or developing practice profiles to describe the everyday practice of an intervention, support training and coaching to a desired practice, and help measure fidelity and performance outcomes.

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Hear a first-hand account of a kinship and adoptive mother raising her nephew, fulfilling roles as both aunt and primary caregiver.

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Hear about the challenges and successes and how Donaniece is teaching her grandson the meaning of family.

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Shares Molene’s story about becoming the primary caregiver for her four nieces, raising them, adopting them, negotiating the child welfare system, and creating a family.

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Bruce and Brenda have been married for 33 years and have four daughters. From 2006 to 2009, they provided a kinship placement for their four grandchildren. In 2010, the couple adopted Bruce (now 18 years old), Tre’Nae (now 15 years old), Mason (now 13 years old), and Kiaunna (now 10 years old).