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Capacity Building

CENTER FOR STATES

Permanency

The Center for States helps child welfare agencies implement and sustain practices that enhance timely and appropriate permanency for children in care, strengthen and maintain the relationships of children in care with their parents, and place children with relatives whenever appropriate. Strategies to help states build capacity include improving partnerships with courts, developing data-driven recruitment and retention plans and programs, and working with stakeholders and organizations that offer an array of recruitment, licensing, and permanency support services. 

Spotlight

Voices of Lived Experience in Child Welfare

Listen to the stories of families, young adults, caregivers, agency leaders and staff, service providers, and legal partners affected by the child welfare system.

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Voices of Lived Experience in Child Welfare: A Digital Story Library Discussion Guide

Use the guide and digital stories from this library with teams and individuals to advocate, inspire, support, recruit, train, and coach towards a better child welfare system. 

Authentic Voices Video Series: Sharing Our Perspective

Watch these insightful stories to learn about issues of belonging, connection, development, and normalcy for children and youth in out-of-home care.

Congregate Care in the Age of Family First

Use these resources to better understand the congregate care provisions of the FFPSA and what they might mean for your agency.

Domestic Violence and the Child Welfare Professional

Use this series of six tip sheets to find information that supports caseworkers responding to families experiencing domestic violence and child maltreatment.

Engaging Partners to Achieve Timely Permanency for Children and Youth Waiting to Be Adopted

Explore this series for tips and strategies to help community-based organizations work with adoptive parents to promote permanency.

Perspectives on Normalcy

Use this series to find support for states and territories in implementing training related to the reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS) of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (P.L. 113-183).

Quality Matters: Improving Caseworker Contacts With Children, Youth, and Families

Browse this suite of publications and learning tools to help build capacity for conducting quality contacts.

Achieving Placement Stability

Register through CapLEARN to access the Webinar Library.
This learning experience is designed to help States and territories build their systems’ capacity to achieve placement stability. Placement stability refers to providing a child or youth in foster care with a stable, secure, long-term family environment in which to live. 

County-Administered State Partnership

County-Administered State Partnership Peer Group promotes collaboration among peers from county-administered state child welfare programs to brainstorm peer-driven solutions that support effective management and to discuss best practices and issues related to urban and rural counties, differing budgets and local resources, and how to respond to federal requirements. This group is open to members who meet the criteria of programmatic leadership at the state level in California, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin and is subject to approval by the Children’s Bureau.

State Adoption Managers

State Adoption Managers Peer Group promotes collaboration among members of the National Association of State Adoption Programs (NASAP) to achieve positive outcomes in the areas of adoption and guardianship. NASAP exists to enable state adoption managers to pool their expertise for progressive improvement in the quality of care to children, youth, and families served by state adoption services. This group is closed, and each jurisdiction currently determines their membership.

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Engaging Youth and Families to Achieve Permanency

Read this article to reflect on the importance of authentic partnerships with youth and families to achieve permanency for children and youth waiting to be adopted.

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Pathways to Permanency: Expanding on Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA) Provisions and Youth Engagement to Improve Permanency

Explore this tip sheet to learn about child welfare agency and court responsibilities related to APPLA provisions and strategies to achieve permanency.

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Parent Partner Program Navigator: Designing and Implementing Parent Partner Programs in Child Welfare

Use the four domain areas of the Parent Partner Program Navigator to learn the key components of designing and implementing successful parent partner programs.

Podcast

Foster Care: A Path to Reunification – Part 1

This podcast shares the work of the Center for Family Life, an organization that aims to stabilize families by providing an array of neighborhood-based family and social services in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Foster care is one of their programs, and families involved in the center’s foster care program are linked to other services to address the family’s specific needs.

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Diligent Recruitment – Intelligent Recruitment

The greater use of demographic, geographic and psychographic data is enabling companies and organizations learn more about who is, and who isn’t, likely to support a product or idea. This podcast helps product designers, sales teams, political campaigns and advertising agencies recognize their target audience. The concept is if more time and energy is spent on a group’s target audience and less on those unreceptive to their product or service, the group will see a greater return on their investment.

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Diligent Recruitment – Regional Resource Navigators

This podcast provides details about the New Mexico Regional Resource Navigator program. A program that assigns navigators to work exclusively with specific regions of the state to guide families through the assessment and licensing processes. By enhancing communication and developing relationships between navigators and prospective foster families, the program intends to increase the number of available foster families throughout the state.

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Diligent Recruitment [Related Topic]

Diligent recruitment is the systematic process through which child welfare agencies recruit, retain, and support foster and adoptive families that reflect the ethnic diversity of children awaiting placements. Find resources below explaining best practices, implementation strategies, and practical examples related to diligent recruitment in agency settings. Explore the resources that Child Welfare Information Gateway has identified about diligent recruitment.

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Achieving and Maintaining Permanency [Related Topic]

When children are placed in out-of-home care (also called foster care), it is imperative that child welfare agencies find safe, permanent homes for them as quickly as possible. In most circumstances, children can be reunited with their families, but in some cases children find homes with relatives or adoptive families. Explore the resources that Child Welfare Information Gateway has identified about achieving and maintaining permanency.

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Pathways to Permanency: Collaborating on the APPLA Provisions of P.L. 113-183 [Infographic]

Consult this guide to learn how agencies and courts work together to use Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangements (APPLAs).

Spotlight On

Spotlight on Planning and Supporting Permanency With Youth

Explore resources that can help agencies build capacity for authentic engagement of youth in decision-making about their lives.