About the Child Welfare Playbook

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About

**Looking for an evaluation of your state's foster parent licensing process? The Child Welfare Playbook is offering recommendations at no cost to interested states.

Our goal is to create a public, actionable playbook of promising practices that can be easily replicated and scaled by others.

The Child Welfare Playbook is a collection of promising practices to end adverse placements in foster care.

An adverse placement is when a child: * Enters foster care when prevention services could have effectively prevented it, or * Is placed in an institution, * Is separated from their siblings, and/or * Is moved far from their school or community (unless this is part of a kin placement)

The group is particularly supportive of kinship placements, and proud of our contributions to the Kin-Specific Foster Home Approval Model Standards.

This work would not be possible without the support of the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, Aviv Foundation, Ballmer Group, Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation, Doris Duke Foundation Greenbridge Family Foundation, New America's New Practice Lab, Schmidt Futures, Stand Together Trust, and North Forty Group.

Send your updates or new plays to updates@childwelfareplaybook.com.

Membership

Any state, county (in county-administered systems), or private agency is welcome to join us. We also welcome input from any individuals or organizations with expertise and promising practices to share.

To join, email members@childwelfareplaybook.com

There is absolutely no cost to participate and the commitment is just two hours a month.

How it Works

  • Every month, we focus on a specific topic area (e.g. partnering with schools, foster parent training, increasing kin licensing). We will schedule a one-hour “interview” with your subject matter expert(s) for the topic to gather information.
  • Everyone joins a one-hour webinar where we share key findings and promising practices from existing pilots and national experts, and suggest cross-state projects.
  • Optionally, we can also hold a 1:1 follow-up call to go over more in-depth recommendations for your team, and to provide any implementation help you may need.
  • Promising practices and positive results will be captured here in the online Child Welfare Playbook, including actionable collateral like example checklists and contracts.

Benefits of Membership

  • Promising practices for improving your processes, in an actionable format (e.g. sample contracts, checklists, policy language, etc.)
  • Data about how current practices compare with other states (shared in a respectful manner with no shaming or ranking)
  • Opportunities to participate in cross-state improvement projects
  • Positive media coverage related to participation (always with your advance approval)
  • Implementation assistance for adapting promising practices

Current Members

  • Every state, most territories, and many title IV-E tribes are current members of the group.