This workbook is designed to support knowledge and skill development as you listen, reflect, and discuss what you have learned throughout the process.

Highlights motivating factors for caregivers serving children with therapeutic needs, including the value of caregiver support networks, continuous training, and a commitment to strengthen families within the caregiver’s community. This video shares a foster mother’s experiences collaborating with biological families toward positive outcomes for the children in her care.

This video highlights the story of a school social worker in Rhode Island and her experience becoming a foster parent to a student who did not have a relative placement.

Illustrates the changes parents face when they decide to provide full-time care for their relative children and the benefits of different types of agency support. In this video, a kinship and adoptive parent discusses strategies she used to successfully provide stability for the children in her growing family and the importance of having agency resources to accommodate changing family needs.

Get an overview of the issues related to the physical and emotional safety of child welfare workers.

Learn to develop data-driven action plans based on the CQI Self-Assessment Instrument findings and any prior assessments.

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.

Read about the value of collaboration as the key to prevention, safety, and long-term stability for children and families.

Listen in as parents and workers share their perspectives on the value of and approaches to improving comprehensive assessment of parents. 

Demonstrates the power of positive caregiver perspective alongside child welfare agency encouragement and support. In this video, caregivers share the concerns they had about becoming foster parents and discuss the resources that helped them become committed and effective foster parents.

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

Learn how people with lived expertise have used their experiences to advocate for changes in approach, practice, and policy in child welfare. 

Offers guidelines and practical suggestions for shifting from a child-focused system that is often reactive, case plan-driven, and protection-focused to a youth-focused system that is proactive, youth-driven, developmentally framed, and normalcy focused.

Learn why the Indian Child Welfare Act and the historical trauma Indigenous people have experienced are important to understand when working with Indigenous families. 

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