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
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.

Video

Buzzwords: Moving to Behavioral Descriptors doodle video is a short, animated video that follows a child involved in a child welfare investigation. The video describes what buzzwords are and illustrates the impact they can have on children and families. It also demonstrates how to recognize buzzwords and offers strategies for transforming buzzwords into objective, behavior-based descriptors.

PDF

This publication looks at buzzwords in the context of words or phrases commonly used in child welfare reporting and documentation that can be subjective or carry negative connotations, and offers strategies to minimize their negative impact.

Video

Reviews the final tasks of assessing agency readiness: analyzing results and determining next steps. This video explores how teams analyze assessment results, what conditions or connections help determine next steps, and why teams should reassess over time and at multiple points in the process.

Video

Examines why teams should understand the factors influencing readiness, use a structured approach to develop and conduct readiness assessments, and analyze results. This video helps teams understand what needs to be in place before assessing readiness and sets up teams for success as part of a change and implementation process at a child welfare agency.

Video

Explores how the factors of motivation, general capacity, and intervention-specific capacity influence agency readiness for change. This video provides examples of and considerations for conducting readiness assessments.

Video

Presents factors that may impact plans to conduct an assessment, how teams can clearly communicate the need for the readiness assessment, and what teams need to consider before conducting an assessment.

Video

Explores how the factors of motivation, general capacity, and intervention-specific capacity influence agency readiness for change. This video provides examples of and considerations for conducting readiness assessments.

PDF

This tool is a role-playing activity, designed to help child welfare workers and supervisors become more familiar with the process of recognizing and translating buzzwords into descriptive language.

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.

PDF

Learn to facilitate a normalcy conversation and to promote normal and developmentally appropriate experiences for youth in foster care.

PDF

Examine a five-step framework that helps organizations promote youth engagement in normalcy conversations about the youth’s own care.

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.

Video

Listen to a youth support partner tell her story of living in kinship care with her grandmother and being reunified with her mother. She discusses the difficulties during her time in care and the system support that might have helped to promote a better relationship with her mother. As a mentor, she helps youth heal from trauma and use their voice in positive ways.