Concurrent Planning: A Web-based Practice Toolkit was funded through a cooperative agreement between the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York and the Children’s Bureau to the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections.

This toolkit is intended as an online tool for states and tribes where promising practices, programs and resources are made available. Since this publication is a web-based toolkit we plan to regularly update it as new programs, practices, publications and policies that focus on Concurrent Planning become available.

It can provide an opportunity to connect with colleagues and share program successes and challenges.  

In putting together this toolkit, we reviewed current research and documentation on concurrent planning. Our goal is to provide the field with information on the nine components necessary for successful concurrent planning practice. We tried to provide a broad array of resources from research, peer reviewed articles, state policies, procedures and practices, tip sheets, curricula and an organizational self study guide.

I am grateful to our colleagues at the Children’s Bureau/ACF/DHHS for their insight into the need for such a toolkit. Patsy Buida, National Foster Care Program Specialist at the Children’s Bureau and our former Federal Project Officer for the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections, has spearheaded this process and provided guidance and direction in making this toolkit a reality. This guidance continues today with our current Federal Project Officer, Taffy Compain.

I want thank the staff and our consultants at the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections for their work on this toolkit. I want to recognize especially Joan Morse our Assistant Director at the NRCPFC who took the lead in putting this together and our NRCPFC project consultant, Madelyn Freundlich, whose knowledge and guidance helped shape this toolkit.  Their combined knowledge of the field was significant in developing the core components.   

We would like to thank our colleagues from the other National Resource Center’s provided information and resources that have enhanced this resource. We would like specially acknowledge Kathy Deserly, National Resource Center for Tribes, for her contribution to the overview section on the application of concurrent planning to American Indian/Alaskan Native children in foster care.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the voices of those most affected -- the families whom we and others have sought to engage.  These courageous families, in extraordinary ways have struggled to continue to love their children in the best ways they know how.

Gerald P. Mallon, DSW
Executive Director