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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Explore our resources below and filter them as you need.

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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 24 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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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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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.