Resource Library

Offers a review of data related to American Indian and Alaska Native children and child welfare. It focuses on the early to mid-points of the child welfare pathway-beginning with suspected maltreatment and followed by entry into foster care.

Presents state and national data on child maltreatment, foster care, kinship caregiving, permanency (including adoption), and older youth in care.

Provides tips on developing a general outreach plan along with how to use risk and protective factors to design a more focused plan to reach families who may have higher needs.  It also offers a few concrete examples of how different sites have done outreach. The article’s strategies and examples can be used to develop site specific outreach plans to connect with adoptive and guardianship families after they have achieved permanency. Introduction to the Resource Watch the video below for an overview of the resource, or click on the button to access the article directly.    

Highlights the often‑overlooked long‑term impacts of foster care on adults who experienced the system as children.  The author underscores the persistent challenges many former foster youths face in adulthood—including housing instability, limited supportive relationships, unresolved trauma, and barriers to accessing benefits due to bureaucratic complexity. This article calls for sustained, developmentally appropriate supports beyond age‑based cutoffs, including trauma‑informed mental health care, stable housing pathways, and mentors who engage without stigma. Ultimately, it urges a shift in narrative: former foster youth should be recognized not only for surviving the system but as whole people capable of thriving when provided with consistent, [...]

Identifies common challenges agencies face in building the evidence required by the Family First Prevent Services Act related to kinship navigator programs. Suggests ways to address these challenges, including defining the program model, selecting a comparison group, ensuring an adequate sample size, selecting appropriate outcomes and reliable and valid measures, and collecting data.

Offers four strategies from ninth grade students about how to design programs that will appeal to youth and encourage engagement. Includes strategies such as diversifying program activities to engage different types of learners and creating environments that are inclusive and judgment-free.

Provides an overview of key issues and strategies for residential leaders regarding how to engage and support families formed through adoption, who have a child in residential. The content of this document was developed based on a literature review, as well as consultations and interviews with adoption experts, practitioners, residential leaders, parent advocates, adoptive parents with residential experience, and youth who have been adopted. The purpose of the document is to raise awareness regarding the unique needs and concerns of families formed by adoption whose children are using residential interventions, and to promote tips and strategies for enhancing the responsiveness [...]

Designed to provide child welfare supervisors, managers, and related professionals with examples of States’ efforts to strengthen supervisory capacity and with tools and resources to enhance supervisory skills.

Provides an overview of six guiding principles for sites working to improve adoption and guardianship preservation and support.

Helps administrators and other leaders assess and improve the services offered to foster, adoptive, and kinship families. Offers a tool to bring stakeholders together for an assessment of services’ quality and accessibility, identify gaps and areas for improvement, and create and action plan based on the results. Includes the assessment tool and a companion guide.