Resource Library

Provides a broad, national overview of the adoption and guardianship legal pathways. This chart is intended as an accopanying tool to the Adoption and Guardianship for Children in Kinship Foster Care brief to help child welfare professionals assist kinship foster parents.

Provides state-specific charts that focus on adoption and guardianship for children in kinship foster care so that these children can exit foster care into permanent families.

Examines the links between early adversity, trauma, and adoption. Describes how pre-placement adversity can undermine neurobehavioral and interpersonal functioning, increasing the risk for long-term psychological difficulties. Examines children’s recovery when placed in a stable adoptive home. Explores adoption as a lived experience, highlighting contextual and developmental factors that facilitate the person’s positive or negative attributions about being adopted, leading to varying patterns of emotional adjustment.

Describes 25 psychological issues that are more common in adoption, including abandonment and attachment, control and defiance, stealth, and rage and grief.

Offers an example of a survey sites can use to assess the needs of adoptive and guardianship families and the value of any services they have accessed.

Showcases a selection of services and programs focusing on kinship relationships originating from Rhode Island. Key topics discussed encompass the distinct treatment of kinship caregivers by agencies and caseworkers, the challenges faced by kinship caregivers, strategies to enhance relationships between caseworkers and kinship caregivers, the roles and responsibilities of Rhode Island’s Family Search and Engagement team, and the implementation of a customer-service approach within the State’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families, with a focus on “managing emotions first.”

Focuses on Washington State’s approach to providing kinship support services. This podcast further explores the unique challenges and dynamics within a rural Latinx community.

Focuses on the successes experienced within Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe in Washington State on their prevention approach. This podcast emphasizes the significance in tailoring supports and services to meet the distinct needs and cultural backgrounds of the families they support.

Explores the public-private child welfare partnership in the state of Nevada.

Explores the improvements to the engagement and support of kinship families in New Mexico. This episode explores the strategic public-private collaboration between New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department and the Southwest Family Guidance Center.