The National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning focuses on increasing the capacity and resources of State, Tribal, and other publicly supported child welfare agencies to promote family-centered practices that contribute to the safety, permanency, and well-being of children while meeting the needs of their families. The NRCFCPPP helps States and Tribes to implement strategies to expand knowledge, increase competencies, and change attitudes of child welfare professionals at all levels, with the goal of infusing family-centered principles and practices in their work with children, youth and families who enter the child welfare system.

On Site Training and Technical Assistance
The NRCFCPPP offers on site training and technical assistance to States, Territories, Tribes, and other publicly supported child welfare agencies on a wide range of issues which promote sustainable systemic reform in child welfare. The NRCFCPPP is particularly focused on working with states throughout all stages of the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs), including the development and implementation of the States’ Program Improvement Plans (PIP).

Sample areas of training and technical assistance include:

• Practices that engage families in assessment, case planning, case review, and timely decision making about reunification, adoption, guardianship, kin placement or appropriate use of APPLA
• Strategies to engage parents and community partners in the provision of safety-focused, family-centered services to children, youth, and families
• Strategies to develop skills in the practice of family group conferencing and family group decision making
• Home-based services to preserve families
• Family-centered practices for supervisors
• Worker/child and worker/parent (foster & birth) visiting
• Visiting between children and youth in care and their parents
• Permanency planning and goal achievement
• Concurrent permanency planning
• Recruitment and retention of resource families and dual licensure issues
• Post-permanency services
• Placement stability
• Disproportional Representation of Children and Youth of Color in Foster Care
• Cultural competency to increase understanding of Indian culture
• Building relationships between tribes and states
• State compliance with ICWA
• Facilitating IV-E agreements between states and tribes
• Engaging fathers and paternal resources in permanency planning
• Permanency for older adolescents
• Appropriate application of APPLA as a permanency goal
• Sibling issues
• Working with birth families to promote reunification
• Health and mental health care issues for children and youth in foster care
• Expanding the service array and improving accessibility to services
• Child welfare practice that addresses substance abuse, domestic violence, and mental health services
• Linkages with courts/legal personnel

The NRCFCPPP is committed
to increasing the capacity and resources of State, Tribal, and other publicly supported child welfare agencies to integrate family-centered practices into the child welfare system and to promote permanency for youth and children in out-of-home care. To do this, we advocate for a mix of...

• family-centered & strengths/needs-based practice approaches
• community-based service delivery
• cultural competency & respect for all families
• open & inclusive practice
• non-adversarial approaches to problem-solving & decision making
• concurrent rather than sequential consideration of all permanency options

                                                                                                                             
Last updated 03/02/05