Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Coordinating Human Service Delivery as a Team
You’re coordinating a housing case and find out your client also needs mental health treatment, legal advocacy for an eviction record, physical rehabilitation, and job training. You can’t solve the housing crisis without addressing what caused it. But you also can’t do all of that alone, and neither can any single provider on your team. […]
How a Plastic Garbage Bag Became the Unofficial Luggage of Foster Care
It was a scene that I would see play out time and time again during my 13-year career, serving some of our nation’s most vulnerable youth. A child comes into care needing foster care, and the youth and their caseworker shows up with a couple of black garbage bags full of everything the child owned […]
Transitioning Out of Foster Care and Into Opportunity
How to best serve the needs of youth aging out of foster care? The law may believe they’re old enough for independent living, but in reality the barriers to doing so can feel insurmountable. It’s a challenging question for even the most seasoned child welfare professionals, but there are actions that government agencies and non-profit […]
The Impact of One Trusted Adult in a Former Foster Youth’s Life
For most of us reading this article, we didn’t have life completely figured out when we turned 18 years of age. I turned 18 in the middle of boot camp with the United States Marine Corps. I declined to notify my Drill Instructors that it was my birthday, lest they plan a special “celebration” for […]
A COVID-19 Call to Action for Foster Parents
Nearly 20 years ago, I embarked on what would be a fascinating career serving some of our nation’s most troubled youth. A remarkable career considering that when I started, I didn’t know anything about kids. I was a Political Science major in need of a job post-college when one of the nation’s most respected youth […]
Adoption and the Never Ending Pursuit of a Forever Family
Without exception, perhaps the most tangible reward for a job well done in the child welfare service is seeing a young child find their forever family via adoption. Yes, it’s great to see children go back home to their birth families as well. To say that I enjoyed witnessing the adoption of a child is […]
All Foster Homes Are Not Created Equal in the Child Welfare System
To be clear, the title of this article is not one of equity or opportunity regarding foster homes in the child welfare system. Rather, it is one of competency and confidence. It may come as a surprise to many, but there is not a significant deficiency in the number of foster homes looking for a […]
Fire for Effect: Using Evidence in Foster Care
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Despite my 13-plus year career in the child welfare sector, I was never a clinician. I managed clinicians in an administrative capacity for a large number of those years and as such, a good deal of the information stuck with me. Yet, I could always count on my beloved clinicians to remind me that a […]
Support Foster Care Services Remotely and on Any Device with Casebook
Given recent events, it’s no surprise that remote work has become one of the most significant topics across every sector, including foster care services. Recently, the California Department of Social Services announced inspectors have begun using a variety of video conferencing tools to provide technical assistance related to the spread of COVID-19. A flash survey by […]