Resource Library

Explores how kinship creates interruptions of the caregiver’s plans, priorities, space and privacy and how these can contribute to feelings of loss and ambivalence for the relative caregiver.

Explores a universal truth: Loyalty runs deep in families.  Shared blood, history, memories and interdependence hold families together.  This video shows child welfare professionals and clinicians how to navigate these issues.

Explores how one person’s hope can be another person’s denial. Understanding how important hope is for family members is critical to empathetically working with them to maintain these hopes and to make other plans-for the sake of the child in their care.

Explores how to manage the understanding feelings of guilt that relative caregivers may experience as a result of changing family dynamics.

Explores projection and transference, which are psychological terms about unconscious processes where we redirect our emotions from one person to another.  These processes can become a risk factor in kinship care.

Provides practical tips to help child welfare professionals engage with children and youth. Guidance is broken down by ages 3 to 12 and 13 and older. The do’s and don’t’s of interactive with children and youth are presented and include specific activities to facilitate engagement.

Offers rationale for and tips related to engaging youth and parents with lived expertise in developing support service programs.

Shares insight from the National Native Children’s Trauma Center (NNCTC) for caseworkers and agencies that are working or will work with indigenous communities to support children and families. This podcast highlights the historical trauma within Native and Tribal communities and what guidance State and local child welfare caseworkers and agencies can use when engaging Native families and communities.

Provides strategies and examples of how child welfare agencies should respectfully engage individuals with lived experience for assistance. This episode presents a session from the Capacity Building Center for State’s 2022 Child Welfare Virtual Expo. The speakers discuss why integrating lived expertise into the workforce is beneficial to child welfare agencies as well as considerations for integrating people with lived expertise into the workplace.

Discusses kinship care through an academic and personal experience lens. The presenter shares her family’s journey with kinship care.