Casework practice is the engagement of families involved with child welfare and the provision of services to support safe, stable, and permanent homes. By using family-centered, kin-first, trauma-focused, and strength-based approaches, child welfare professionals can best assist families in maintaining their children in their homes and accessing concrete and other supports.
A key component of casework practice is recognizing and addressing racial bias, particularly in decision-making. African American and American Indian/Alaska Native children and families often have disparate outcomes compared with White children and families. For example, they are more likely to be confirmed for maltreatment, experience out-of-home care, and undergo a termination of parental rights.
Casework practice should center on the diverse identities, needs, and circumstances present in each family and individual. The root causes of safety concerns for a child may be due to issues affecting a family, such as poverty or substance use. In these cases, families will benefit more from financial assistance, community services, and other supports than being separated from their child.
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Subtopics
Domestic Violence
Intimate partner violence and/or family violence (IPV/FV) profoundly impacts children, adults, and families. Families experience better outcomes when child welfare and IPV/FV agencies collaborate.
Recruiting and Retaining Families for Children and Youth in Foster Care
Deliberately recruiting resource families who reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children coming into care and providing equitable support to families is essential to retaining foster parents and ensuring long-term placement stability.
Trauma-Informed Practice
Trauma-informed child welfare systems are better equipped to provide equitable, culturally responsive services to treat traumatic stress symptoms and strengthen resilience and protective factors for children, youth, and families.
Decision-Making
Child welfare decisions should be guided by how to best support families in helping their children thrive in their homes.
Differential Response
Differential response, also called alternative response, is a practice that establishes multiple pathways to support families following a child maltreatment report.
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a broad process that helps child welfare agencies and programs deliver effective, equitable services. Learn about creating a CQI process, implementing strategies, and more.
Disaster Management
Creating equitable disaster management plans is crucial for child welfare agencies. Learn about preparing for and responding to emergencies quickly and effectively to protect children and families.
Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practices—when properly selected and implemented—provide child welfare agencies with proven approaches to support children, youth, families, and communities.
Co-Occurring Factors
Understanding the complexities of co-occurring risk factors can help child welfare professionals work with families to identify, understand, and address factors that may be impacting their ability to care for their children.
Lived Experience
People with lived experience have firsthand involvement with the child welfare system. These individuals have valuable insights that can drive overall system improvement.
Understanding Historical Trauma
Holistically supporting families requires acknowledging, understanding, and addressing the historical trauma faced by many racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.
Featured
Family Engagement: Partnering With Families to Improve Child Welfare Outcomes
Find information on the foundational elements of the family engagement approach, followed by strategies and promising practices for implementing it for frontline caseworkers who directly engage families to promote safety, permanency, and well-being.
Prioritizing Youth Voice: The Importance of Authentic Youth Engagement in Case Planning
Learn about the importance of youth engagement and explore key concepts and strategies for caseworkers to apply to their practice while promoting increased safety, well-being, healthy development, and improved outcomes for young people.
Strategies for Authentic Integration of Family and Youth Voice in Child Welfare
Explore a tip sheet and other resources relating to authentically engaging families and youth as partners at the child welfare system and agency levels. The resources provide child welfare professionals with tips, strategies, and practice examples.
The Importance of a Trauma-Informed Child Welfare System
Learn about the importance of cultivating a child welfare system that recognizes and responds appropriately to trauma. The brief concludes by highlighting how cross-system collaborations can help to promote trauma-informed child welfare practice.
Child Welfare Practice to Address Racial Disproportionality and Disparity
Explore factors that contribute to racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare system. The publication also outlines strategies to assist professionals with addressing these issues and decision-making along the continuum.
Protective Factors Approaches in Child Welfare
Find an overview of protective factors approaches to prevent child abuse and neglect and the concepts of protective and risk factors. In this brief, also discover ways to build protective capacities to help lower the risk of child abuse and neglect.
Working With Family Strengths and Resilience
Explore how following Indigenous ways helps families remain resilient and find information on trauma-informed strategies that can help Tribal child welfare professionals and others recognize and build on family culture, strengths, and resilience.
Kinship Care and the Child Welfare System
Find information to help kin caregivers work effectively with the child welfare system. The publication also includes links to more detailed information on places to find support and additional resources to help caregivers learn about child welfare.
Episode 28: Family Group Decision-Making: Becoming a Family-Centered Agency
Discover lessons learned through the YMCA Families United Family Group Conferencing Program, a recipient of a 2015 Children's Bureau grant within the Building the Evidence for Family Group Decision-Making in Child Welfare discretionary grant cluster.