Resource Library

Provides key elements, distribution strategies and best practices for developing and disseminating an outreach letter and well-being questionnaire to adoptive and guardianship families. This tipsheet also includes practical tips for the outreach letter along with implementation tips for the well-being questionnaire.

Explores the impact of traumatic life events on children, including the significant risk for developing serious and long-lasting problems across multiple areas of development. Provides information about how children are far more likely to exhibit resilience to childhood trauma when child-serving programs, institutions, and service systems understand the impact of childhood trauma, share common ways to talk and think about trauma, and thoroughly integrate effective practices and policies to address it—an approach often referred to as trauma-informed care. Presents the four Rs of trauma-informed-care: Realize, Recognize, Respond, and Resist Re-traumatization.

Offers strategies for child welfare workers to develop a self-care plan to help avoid burnout.

Outlines strategies for reaching adoptive and guardianship families before they experience crises, emphasizing proactive outreach, normalizing the need for support, and offering services at various stages of their adoption and guardianship journey.    

Offers advice about ensuring that people with lived expertise receive the development and support they need as they advise, provide, develop, or lead support services for other resource families.

Provides guidance for child welfare agencies on how to track and analyze post-permanency instability specifically focusing on foster care re-entries among children who were previously adopted or placed in guardianship. This article emphasizes the importance of understanding post-permanency instability to improve services and outcomes for families. It covers such themes as the purpose of tracking, data-driven decision making and measurement approaches.

Discusses how Vermont assesses child, family, and system risk and protective factors to help determine how best to support adoptive families.

Investigates how child welfare systems can better identify families who struggle after adoption or guardianship. This article emphasizes that while most families will adjust well with supportive services, a significant portion face challenges that may lead to children/youth re-entering foster care.

Describes specific activities associated with Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation Services. Having a clear description and guidelines about the delivery of the program is necessary to help ensure the quality of postadoption and guardianship service delivery is equitable and consistent across the state. This manual includes a theory of change, describes the philosophical principles and values that undergird the program, defines assessments and treatment planning steps, and recognizes the racial and cultural differences of clients and their adoptive parents/guardians when providing services.

Offers advice for sites that might be interested in implementing Adoption and Guardianship Enhanced Support (AGES), based on lessons learned by Wisconsin.