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 43 resources
Video

Highlights the role agency resources and family support can play in helping kinship families face challenges. This video discusses an aunt's decision to become a full-time caregiver for her niece and her niece's daughter, and the importance home visits played in the transition.

PDF

Adapt strategies from this publication to improve specific areas of culture and climate to support partnering with families after conducting an assessment.

PDF

Get guidance, tips, and strategies for assessing agency culture and climate. 

PDF

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

PDF

Adapt proven strategies from this publication to improve specific areas of culture and that support collaborative development of an effective service array.

Infographic

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

Podcast

Listen to a judge and a child welfare agency leader discuss the challenges, achievements, and strategies of the Tompkins County Family Treatment Court. This longstanding collaboration between the child welfare, substance use treatment, and judicial systems has been steadily growing its Family Treatment Court Team and improving outcomes for families since 2001.

Podcast

Listen to child welfare agency leaders in the District of Columbia, service providers, partners in community collaboratives, and sister agencies talk about how they coordinate service planning and delivery, are culturally responsive to the community, and provide seamless services to families.

Podcast

Listen to child welfare agency leaders in the District of Columbia talk about how they work with partners to use their different data lenses to understand the needs of families and to structure a set of services to best meet the full spectrum of needs. In Kentucky, child welfare agency leaders describe the process of finding the story behind the numbers to transform their system.

Podcast

In this introduction to the podcast series How We Partner With the Community to Improve Service Options, agency leaders talk about the changing culture of their organizations. Leaders from Kentucky discuss their Child Welfare Transformation initiative, three transformational goals, and culture of safety.

Video

Emphasizes the importance of community and caseworker support in having the resources needed to promote family well-being, particularly when caring for children with special needs. This video highlights the perspective of a kinship caregiver who is an Athabaskan native teaching her grandchildren the Navajo culture and community traditions and passing down her grandparents' stories.

Podcast

Explore the efforts agencies, community collaborative organizations, and others are making to bring families, youth, and communities to the table as they strive to improve the child welfare system in this podcast. 

PDF

Use this discussion guide to lead your team to integrate strategies into practice for immediate improvements and to identify models you can adapt for long-term change.

Video

Watch this recorded webinar to learn how other jurisdictions encourage kinship care placements and then discuss kinship support with your team.

Video

Addresses the importance of being open to agency support and resources and the necessity of self-care in working through family transitions and meeting family needs. In this video, a kinship parent caring for her niece's children reflects on her family's strategies for raising children who have experienced trauma and the resources that enabled them to become effective kinship caregivers.