Resource Library

Provides strategies for organizations and programs seeking to enhance their cultural effectiveness. Offers tips in seven areas: leadership, policies and procedures, data collection and analysis, community engagement, language and communication access, staff cultural responsiveness, and workforce diversity and inclusion.

Demonstrates how jurisdictions use data to inform their planning and decision-making. Includes D.C. child welfare agency leaders explaining how they work with partners to use their different data lenses to understand the needs of families and to structure a set of services to best meet the full spectrum of needs. Describes how Kentucky child welfare agency leaders find the story behind the numbers to transform their system.

Offers a guide for community-based programs on how to become more culturally responsive to the needs of increasingly diverse populations. Directs users to tools and resources they can use and adapt to strengthen their capacity to provide culturally competent services.

Defines various types of adoption discontinuity and explores data on the number of adoption/guardianship disruptions and dissolutions as well as parent, child, and systemic factors that affect placement stability.

Discusses the significant racial disparities in the child welfare system, particularly affecting African American and Native American children. The author shares her journey from a Child Protective Services worker to a leader in addressing institutional and structural racism in child welfare. This article emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing institutional and structural racism within child welfare systems. The article showcases efforts and successes in Texas, where data-driven strategies and race equity analysis led to improved outcomes for children and families.

Discusses ways in which adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) impose challenges to the developing brain. Reviews data pointing to the effectiveness of early intervention in addressing neurodevelopmental consequences associated with maltreatment or institutional rearing.

Explores different models of supervision being used by organizations who have parent peer support staff and offers key strategies for supervising this staff.

Explains how programs that use a positive youth development approach can embed a racial equity perspective so that they can more effectively engage with, support, and meet the needs of youth and young adults of color. Provides a set of principles to guide programs, regardless of their setting, in embedding a racial equity perspective in their practices and presents a case example.

Explores how workers in a tribal child welfare agency can support families at every stage, even when they already have a full plate of work. 

This discussion guide accompanies the Engaging Kinship Caregivers video training series.  This guide helps program directors, supervisors, and trainers lead group sessions to deepen learning experiences.