Informational & Practice Publications, Resources, & Tools
For Child Welfare Professionals
Permanency Planning Today, Winter 2011: Meaningful Family Partnerships
This issue of Permanency Planning Today, the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connection’s (NRCPFC) bi-annual newsletter, provides an overview of NRCPFC’s work related to the integration of meaningful family partnerships throughout child welfare practice and features articles on the following aspects of meaningful family engagement: Extreme Recruitment™, an approach to family finding and achieving permanency for youth; engaging non-custodial fathers; and, effectively engaging, recruiting, coaching, and supervising Parent Partners/Advocates. In this issue, NRCPFC Family Engagement Consultants share their perspectives and reflections in the articles, “A Letter to My Social Worker” and “If I Knew Then What I Know Now.” (Winter 2011)
Family Engagement Resources
This NRCPFC resource handout provides a listing of resources on the topic of family engagement in child welfare, including descriptions of each resource and website addresses where they can be accessed online. (October 2010)
Meaningful Family Engagement Resources from NRCPFC- and LCWCWP-Sponsored TA: Louisiana DCFS Staff Development and Appreciation Initiative
In September and October 2010, several members of the NRCPFC Family Engagement Consultant team were involved in providing intensive technical assistance (TA) that Louisiana Child Welfare Comprehensive Workforce Project (LCWCWP) and National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections (NRCPFC) sponsored as part of Louisiana’s DCFS Staff Development and Appreciation initiative in the Lake Charles, Greater New Orleans and Covington Regions. The PowerPoint, agenda, and handouts from this TA are available on the LCWCWP website. Handouts include: Father Presence/Father Involvement, Engaging Fathers Discussion Guide, Benefits and Consequences of Change, Birth Parent Engagement Assessment Tool, Meaningful Engagement of Birth Families as Partners Values and Goals.
Teleconferences, Webinars, Webcasts & Videos
NRCPFC Webcast: Meaningful Family Engagement
Meaningful family engagement is a prerequisite for helping families achieve their goals. This National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections webcast focused on meaningful engagement of families, particularly birth parents. The discussion included strategies for states focusing on how to successfully engage family members affected by the child welfare system, including fathers and paternal resources. In addition, a birth parent shared her experience as a former client and now a national consultant helping public child welfare agencies better engage families within and beyond the case plan. Using state examples of promising practices with meaningful family engagement strategies, this webcast also discussed utilizing the voice of parents as presenters and in digital stories. (January 26, 2011)
Digital Stories from the Field: Family Partner Perspectives The NRCPFC developed this website, which represents their on-going work to create digital stories with key stakeholders in the child welfare field. The stories include the perspectives of parents and family partners, as well as former foster youth, social workers, supervisors, advocates, judges, and CASA workers. NRCPFC has convened a group of family partners who have been working in their states through the initial demonstration Systems of Care grants. On the Family Partner Perspectives section of the Digital Stories website, family partners share their stories and experiences as birth families, adoptive families, and agency practitioners in order to help promote family engagement. The storytellers present their narratives, combining their voices with images, sounds, and video, to create short powerful digital movies that easily can be shared with a designated audience. Each story is accompanied by additional web-based resources on the story topic.
*Many of these resources were developed previously by the
National Resource Center for
Permanency and Family Connections (NRCPFC).
Informational & Practice Publications, Resources, & Tools
Meaningful Parent Leadership: A Guide for Success
This guide from the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, a service of the Children’s Bureau and member of the T/TA Network, is designed to encourage organizations working in the area of child abuse prevention and family support to include parents in their program planning, implementation, and evaluation activities. It is also intended to motivate parents to fully utilize these opportunities. (April 2010)
Working with Parent Partners to Achieve Better Outcomes for Families
This issue of Child Law Practice, a publication of the American Bar Association, features an article on parent partners. It provides suggestions and tips for attorneys of parents on how to work with both parent partners and parents. By Diane Boyd Rauber, Child Law Practice, Vol. 28, No. 11 (January 2010)
For Youth & Families
From Rights to Reality: A Plan for Parent Advocacy and Family-Centered Child Welfare Reform
This resource from Rise Magazine is designed to unite parents and parent advocacy around a common set of goals. From Rights to Reality” identifies 15 rights for parents affected by the child welfare system. Each right is illustrated by parent stories. Most parents do not yet have these rights in child welfare proceedings. From Rights to Reality represents a commitment to working in our communities and nationwide to make these rights a reality.
Training & Curricula
FRIENDS Online Learning Center Parent Leadership Course
This online learning course from FRIENDS National Resource Center highlights parent leadership. Participants will learn about the benefits of parent leadership to parents, agencies, and programs; ways to nurture parent leadership; how the protective factors influence parent involvement and leadership; ways to identify behaviors that indicate a parent is ready to move into a leadership position and how practitioners can encourage and support them. FRIENDS’ eLearning courses are free, available 24 hours a day, and can be taken over time. Registration is required to participate in courses from the FRIENDS Online Learning Center.
New Hampshire: Parent Partner Program
New Hampshire’s Parent Partner Strategy creates systematic mechanisms to develop a network of parent leaders ready to partner with the Divisions in various roles and capacities. Fathers and mothers are identified, engaged, trained, and empowered to be a resource to other parents as support, coaches, mentors, advocates, and role models. They take on leadership roles within the Divisions and provide “parent voice” to positively impact practices and systems change. The Parent Partner Program engages fathers and mothers as resources to one another, as change agents, and as leaders to improve safety, permanency, and well being outcomes for children and families. Fathers and mothers have knowledge and expertise found nowhere else. It is NH’s belief that parent inclusion improves their capacity to safely maintain children at home and to timely reunify children who have been removed from their families.
New York
Child Welfare Organizing Project – Community Connections: Program Evaluation Final Report
This report shares the findings of an evaluation study conducted in an effort to learn more about the innovative parent organizing model implemented by the Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP) in East Harlem, New York City. It identifies the role and impact of CWOP community representatives on birthparents, families, and child safety conference outcomes. CWOP community representatives attend child safety conferences with the birthparents to provide them with emotional support, resources, and information about their rights and responsibilities within the child welfare system. The community representatives who are familiar with the community and the resources available help parents as they take steps to either ensure that their children remain safely home or become reunified with them after a removal. The study investigated perceptions of multiple stakeholders (i.e. birthparents, community representatives, and child protective services staff) about this model; examined birthparents satisfaction levels with CWOP representatives’ services; depicted barriers to parental engagement as well as factors promoting engagement; and discussed dynamics in collaboration between community representatives and child protection services. (June 2012)
Strong Advocates, Strong Families: Lessons from an Initiative to Strengthen Parent Advocates in New York City
Child welfare leaders, frontline workers, parents, and advocates gathered in New York City on March 16, 2011 for a forum about the impact of the Parent Advocate Initiative. This article from Rise Magazine features highlights from the forum, facilitated by Andrew White, director of the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. Presenter comments have been edited and condensed. (April 2011)
Parent Advocates in the Child Welfare System Forum
Parent advocates are trained to support birth parents as they navigate the complicated child welfare system. Research suggests they can help parents successfully move their child welfare cases forward. In June, 2009, the Parent Advocate Initiative (PAI) was created to promote the employment and support of Parent Advocates in foster care agencies in New York City. At the Parent Advocates in the Child Welfare System Forum on March 16, 2011, participants discussed the Parent Advocate Initiative's Year 2 Evaluation Report. The evaluation was conducted by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. The Forum featured: Commissioner John Mattingly, New York City Administration for Children's Services; Commissioner Gladys Carrión, New York State Office of Children and Family Services; Jim Purcell, Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies; Teresa Bachiller, CWOP; Mike Arsham, CWOP; Sabra Jackson, PAN Coordinator; Diane Leske, COFCCA; Sarah Wolf, Chapin Hall; Anstiss Agnew, Forestdale, Stephanie Hooker, Lutheran Social Services; Felicia Alleyne Davis, Parent Advocate; Shanene Bryant, Parent Advocate; Dana Guyet, ACS; Bill Baccaglini, NY Foundling; Richard Altman, JCCA; Jeremy Kohomban, Children's Village; Andrew White, Center for New York City Affairs. (2011)
The Parent Advocate Initiative: Promoting Parent Advocates in Foster Care
In 2009/2010, CWOP (Child Welfare Organizing Project) played a key role in the Fund for Social Change Parent Advocate Initiative, a multi-funder, multi-agency collaborative intended to support the development of staff roles for life-experienced Parent Advocates in New York City foster care agencies. CWOP trained a cohort of eight Parent Advocates who moved on to employment in a variety of organizations. CWOP administers a city-wide Parent Advocate Network. This evaluation report from Chapin Hall focuses on the efficacy of CWOP’s Parent Leadership Curriculum and on the integration of the Parent Advocates into their respective agencies. (May 2010)
Texas: Parent Collaboration Group
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services launched the Parent Collaboration Group (PCG) in September 2002 to provide a venue for gathering and incorporating parental feedback to enhance child protective services. The PCG provides a mechanism to include biological parents in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the CPS service delivery system and provides a unique perspective on how to improve services to families and children.
