Bulletins for Professionals Series

Addresses the scope of the problem of child neglect as well as its consequences, reviews definitions and strategies for assessing neglect, presents lessons learned about prevention and intervention, and suggests sources of training and informational support. Strategies for addressing neglect, beginning with prevention, are included.

Describes the intersection of child welfare and early intervention (EI), provides an overview of the EI process, and outlines the challenges and strategies for implementing EI provisions in Federal law.

Explores how professionals can help youth in foster care consider their full range of legal and relational permanency options as well as understand the feelings that may underlie a young person’s reluctance in pursuing permanency.

Provides an overview of the intersection of child welfare and parental incarceration; highlights practices to facilitate parent-child visits during incarceration, include parents in case planning, and work toward reunification; and points to resources to help caseworkers in their practice with these children and families.

Provides professionals with an overview of chronic child neglect, its implications for child welfare, and casework practice to address it. The bulletin also explores multisystem collaboration and partnerships, evidence-informed interventions, and the importance of hope in combatting chronic neglect. It features examples of State and local efforts to address chronic child neglect.

Explores concurrent planning research and practice. Examines the role of the courts, how to assess for the probability of family reunification, and caseworker training. Provides State and local examples of concurrent planning practice.

Discusses the extent of the overlap between domestic violence and child welfare, some of the effects of domestic violence on child witnesses, and the trend toward a more collaborative, communitywide response to the issue. It also features promising practices from States and local communities.

Provides an overview of the foundational elements of the family engagement approach, followed by strategies and promising practices for implementing this approach at the case level, peer level, and systems level.

Due to their potentially unstable living situations, physical distance from friends and family, traumatic experiences, and emotional vulnerability, children involved with child welfare are at risk for being targeted by traffickers who are actively seeking victims to exploit. This bulletin explores how caseworkers can identify and support children who have been victimized as well as children that are at greater risk for future victimization. It provides background information about the issue, strategies caseworkers can use to identify and support victims and potential victims, and tools and resources that can assist caseworkers.

Due to their potentially unstable living situations, physical distance from friends and family, traumatic experiences, and emotional vulnerability, children involved with child welfare are at risk for being targeted by traffickers who are actively seeking children to exploit. This bulletin is intended for child welfare agency leadership and explores how child welfare agencies can support children who are victims of human trafficking, as well as children who are at greater risk for future victimization. It provides background information about the issue, including its scope and relevant Federal legislation and initiatives, and strategies that agencies can implement to address the trafficking of children. State and local policy and program examples also are provided.

Provides child welfare workers and related professionals with information on the intersection between substance use disorders and child maltreatment and describes strategies for prevention, intervention, and treatment, including examples of effective programs and practices. The bulletin also discusses the impact of parental substance use on children, child welfare laws related to parental substance use, service delivery challenges, systems change and collaboration, and innovative prevention and treatment approaches.

Discusses the ways that professionals can help foster parents before, during, and after they adopt from foster care in order to ensure that the child and family experience a successful adoption outcome. Foster parents are the most important source of adoptive families for children in the child welfare system. In order to facilitate these types of adoption, professionals should be knowledgeable about the benefits, costs, and practice implications.

Discusses services for children and youth in foster care to address their readiness and preparation for adoption and other permanent relationships. It focuses on ways that child welfare workers and other adults can help to prepare those children and youth whose goal is adoption; however, much of the information on preparation is also applicable to children and youth with other permanency goals. The bulletin examines what has previously been considered adequate preparation as well as current practices and those in development to more effectively ensure that children and youth are better prepared for permanent family relationships, including both legal and relational permanency (permanent relationships with caring adults).

Provides information for child welfare professionals about the importance of permanency for youth and strategies for achieving it. Permanency efforts for youth should include both legal permanency (e.g., reunification, adoption, kinship care) and relational permanency (i.e., a relationship or connection with a caring adult, such as a relative, neighbor, service provider, teacher, or other important person in the youth's life). These adults may provide lifelong support that can help youth transition to adulthood and may even become a legal permanent option for the youth.

Draws from available literature and practice knowledge to summarize key issues related to providing effective services to support the stability and permanency of adoptions. It is intended to support adoption professionals in addressing adoptive parents' and children's needs for services, recognizing key considerations in providing services, addressing emerging issues, and meeting common challenges in delivery.

Outlines child welfare professionals' legal responsibility to provide background information to adoptive families about their prospective child or youth. The bulletin explains the benefits of disclosure to the child, the adoptive family, and the adoption agency. It addresses the information that should be provided, helping families understand the information, international adoption where little or no information is available, wrongful adoption, and additional resources.

Examines the statistics and research related to maltreatment of children with disabilities, risk factors, and strategies for prevention. Issues encountered when assessing a child with a disability for maltreatment are explored; and information about promising prevention, collaboration, and training approaches are outlined.

Explores relevant research, strategies, and resources to assist child welfare professionals in preserving connections among siblings. Sibling relationships can provide positive support and improved outcomes for children involved with child welfare as well as for those in the general population. Connections with siblings can serve as a protective factor for children who have been removed from their birth homes, but for a variety of reasons, siblings may not be placed together or may not have regular contact.

This bulletin presents an overview of child welfare supervision and explores the dimensions of supervision that agencies may want to consider as they seek to strengthen the effectiveness of their services to children and families. This bulletin is designed to provide child welfare supervisors, managers, and related professionals with examples of States' efforts to strengthen supervisory capacity and with tools and resources to enhance supervisory skills.

Summarizes the effects of early trauma on brain development and steps child welfare professionals can take to screen for developmental delays and identify the trauma-affected children and youth in their care. Looks at ways to access cross-sector, therapeutic, and evidence-based treatment to encourage healthy recovery for trauma-affected children and youth.

Offers information to help child welfare agency managers achieve successful reunifications. This bulletin includes a description of the benefits of supporting reunification and preventing reentries, statistics, factors that affect reunification and reentry, and relevant strategies and approaches. It also includes examples of promising practices being implemented by States and localities.

Describes open adoption and ways in which professionals can guide birth and adoptive families who are contemplating open adoption or who are already having postadoption contact. Open adoption allows adoptive parents, and often the adopted child, to interact directly with birth parents. Also known as ?fully disclosed,? this type of adoption can help children and parents minimize and resolve the change or loss of relationships. It also can help those involved to maintain and celebrate adopted children?s connections with all the important people in their lives.

Helps child welfare professionals promote kinship care by providing kinship caregivers with information, referral, and support services to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of children in their care. Topics covered include the types and benefits of kinship care, training for caseworkers and caregivers, specific strategies for supporting kinship caregivers, and examples of successful State and local child welfare programs that provide services to kinship caregivers.

Helps child welfare and adoption professionals expand their cultural competence and skills when working with LGBTQ individuals and same-sex couples. It examines laws and policies and provides tips to engage this vital and distinct community effectively. This bulletin includes information about challenges faced by LGBTQ adoptive parents, challenges faced by professionals when working with LGBTQ families, supporting transgender parents, and how to create a welcoming agency.

Discusses the benefits and potential challenges of working with military families who are pursuing adoption, and it describes the many resources available inside and outside of the military support structure. Benefits include the flexibility and diversity of military families, while deployment and frequent relocation can add challenges to the adoption process. Adoption professionals should be aware of the different resources available to military families who wish to adopt.

Helps child welfare professionals and others who work with transitioning youth to understand the Federal legislative requirements for transition plans and partner with youth to develop a plan over time and through close youth engagement that builds on their strengths while supporting their needs.