Caseworker Visits With Children and Youth in Out-of-Home Care

Resources on this page highlight the importance of establishing a trusting relationship with families and youth in out of home care to support quality interactions during casework visits. Quality engagement during visits is a key element of effective practice, as it supports an accurate assessment of safety, permanency, and wellbeing.

Assessing Safety in Out-of-Home Care
The Pennsylvania Child Welfare Resource Center
Provides a curriculum with strategies that frontline child welfare workers can implement in order to assess child safety during home visits. This resource includes workshop content, appendices, and a series of handout.

Child Welfare Toolkit for Early Childhood Professionals (PDF - 23,091 KB)
Partnership for Resilient Infants + Toddlers (2014)
Provides fact sheets about standard child development, including age-specific red flags to note. This toolkit for early childhood professionals can be utilized by caseworkers during in-home visits.

Defining Quality Contacts (PDF - 286 KB)
Capacity Building Center for States & Capacity Building Collaborative (2017)
Provides a foundation for understanding what quality contacts look like, why they are important, and how a child welfare agency can set the stage for their successful implementation. Quality contacts, also referred to as caseworker visits, are defined as purposeful interactions between caseworkers and children, youth, parents, and resource parents that contribute to assessment and case planning processes.

Engaging Youth in Foster Care [Podcast]
Child Welfare Information Gateway (2016)
Discusses strategies for caseworkers to implement in order to encourage older youth to participate in case planning.

Quality Matters: Improving Caseworker Contacts With Children, Youth, and Families
Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative
Helps improve engagement with families by identifying elements of quality contacts before, during, and after visits and ways the supervisory relationship can improve practice.

Quality Contact Casework Activities Worksheet (PDF - 102 KB)
Capacity Building Center for States (2017)
Lists suggested casework activities to undertake before, during, and after a caseworker visit with children, youth, and families. Caseworkers and their supervisors can use this simple two-page worksheet as general guidance to help plan and assess quality contacts.

Quality Visitation (PDF - 216 KB)
The Pennsylvania Child Welfare Resource Center
Outlines the key elements and content for quality child welfare visits.

Using Science and Technology Effectively (PDF - 264 KB)
Capacity Building Center for States (2017)
Provides an overview of the links among adolescent brain development, trauma-responsive care, and the importance of normalcy and explains how this information can be used to work more effectively with young people in foster care.