Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.
Making It Possible
Need strategies to involve birth families in your state CFSR? New tools can help.
learn more>Resources and Tools
Two new resources related to dads as permanency resources: What about the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and Involve Nonresident Fathers (PDF) and Fatherhood.gov, the new federal clearinghouse with sections for researchers and policymakers.
Questions about kinship care among social workers, policymakers, state legislators, or community partners? See Is Kinship Care Good for Kids? (PDF)
Youth and Family Perspectives
“Kayla is like a complicated plant. She has roots with us— her adoptive family—and roots with her birth family. To be healthy as an adult, the more support she has in place, the better.”
Donna Coraluzzo, foster parent
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Making It Possible
In conversations that started in Spring 2007 with child welfare directors in nearly 40 states, Casey Family Services has learned that involving youth and families in federal Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSR) is critically important for many states.
One child welfare director noted that, for youth permanency work to get traction, “We need to change the mindset of everyone—workers, families, the courts—so they all work with youth and get out of the mindset of doing to youth and their families.” This is true of case planning with individual youth; it’s also true of involving young people and their families in systems reform efforts.
Another child welfare director described recent changes in his state, saying, “Youth are now active on the CSFR team; this has been a tremendous change. The youth have grown so much in maturity, and the impact on the system and stakeholders has been amazing.”
Need tools to strengthen your CFSR process?
- A CFSR training and technical assistance package is now available from the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement (NRCOI). Working with the other national resource centers, NRCOI has developed CFSR-enrichment resources, presentations, and technical assistance packages, including one called, “Engaging Community Stakeholders and Building Community Partnerships."
State Spotlight
Ties with birth families—however complicated—are important to older youth in care, two different studies say.
Archive
- View Current Issue
- From Innovation to Action
September 2008, Volume 2 - Court Reforms that Support Youth in Achieving Lifelong Families
February-March 2008, Volume 2 - Engaging Youth in Achieving and Sustaining Permanence
November 2007, Volume 1
About Connections Count
Produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation/Casey Family Services, Connections Count is an electronic newsletter focusing on best practices, tools, research, and data on youth permanence in child welfare.
read more>Contact Us
Casey Family Services
127 Church Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Tel: 203.401.6900
Fax: 203.401.6901