Resource Library

Contrasts components of ideal, equitable engagements with components of inequitable engagements, which staff can use to identify opportunities to strengthen efforts to engage people with lived experience.

Provides behavioral and mental health professionals with an overview of child welfare, describes how these practitioners and child welfare workers can support each other, and offers additional information resources.

Defines inclusion and its organizational impact on staff and organizational culture. This article provides strategies for leaders such as actively seeking diverse perspectives, building psychological safety and provide leadership opportunities that foster an inclusive work culture. Lastly, this article emphasizes the importance of avoiding common pitfalls. A downloadable PDF is also available on the website.

Discusses Tennessee’s Post-Permanency program, Adoption Support and Preservation|Guardianship Support and Preservation (ASAP|GSAP). Tennessee has supported families who provide permanency to children in the state’s foster care system for nearly 30 years.  This robust program offers services that include training for parents transitioning to adoption or guardianship, in-home counseling services (including crisis intervention), support groups, educational advocacy, coaching for parents, training for parents and professionals related to key issues in adoption and guardianship, social and recreational events for children and parents, and information and referral. Readers will learn more about the ASAP|GSAP program, successes and values.

Child welfare leaders and agencies will learn about an approach, called placement day analysis, that calculates the financial impact of diverting or shortening child welfare placements. Decision makers can identify the right interventions and program changes-those that are good for both children and lean agency budgets-to invest in moving forward.

Provides nine questions and associated criteria developed by Dr. Joseph Crumbley to guide post-permanency and kinship care professionals in assessing whether shared parenting is a viable option for birth parents and kinship caregivers.

Presents the benefits of supporting prospective parents, offers tips for building connections among support group participants, and outlines ways to help prospective parents develop their capacity to parent a child through adoption, foster care, or kinship care.

Provides an overview of the benefits of providing services to support adoptive, foster, and kinship families as well as examples of how various jurisdictions offer support.

Provides an overview of adoptive families’ challenges and the supports they most want.

Explains that addressing the unmet financial needs of relative caregivers is crucial for sustaining kinship care and ensuring the caregiver’s ability to raise the children under their care effectively.