This guide is designed to support administrative leaders in states and other jurisdictions in using data to assess and identify ways to improve their service array.

Learn about the range of practices comprising the continuum of youth engagement to youth empowerment.

Learn the importance of effective, ongoing collaboration between child welfare agencies and community-based partners.

See how coordination can improve identification, reporting, and services for youth who are victims or at risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking.

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.

Watch this video to learn how community-based partnerships strengthen families and see what jurisdictions are doing to build lines of collaboration and trust.

​​Increase awareness and understanding of the healthcare needs of children and youth in foster care, the medical services available to them, and the healthcare services available for children who return home and youth who age out of care.​ 

Learn strategies to address the mental health needs of children, young people, and families.

Defines prepermanancy services for prospective adoptive and guardianship families and raises awareness about the need for more prepermanency services supports alongside postpermanency supports.

Find out where evidence-based programs and services are being implemented to prevent children from entering foster care.

Read this resource to learn about direct financial assistance and emergency financial assistance available to young people.

Explore strategies for redesigning the child welfare service array to meet the needs of youth and young adults currently and formerly in foster care.

Explore how child welfare agencies, legal and judicial stakeholders, prevention partners, and communities can work together to build prevention-focused systems, starting with jurisdictions' 2020–24 Child and Family Services Plans (CFSPs). 

Explore sex trafficking prevention best practices for implementing provisions of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (P.L. 113-183).

Explore tips to help promote youth mental health and wellness services, jurisdictional highlights, and links to relevant resources and tools.