Engagement Tools

Chapin Hall (2012). Parents' Pasts and Families' Futures. Includes content on family engagement, child trauma, and service arrays. Emphasizes the importance of understanding the nature and prevalence of traumatic experiences among biological parents whose children were placed in the child welfare system. Early family engagement is considered vital to improving treatment and outcomes for families and children.

UCLA Center on Child Welfare. Enhancing Strengths/Needs Based Practice: Effectively Addressing Behaviors to Meet the Unmet Needs of Children and Families. This two-day training for social workers provides an overview of the Katie A. Strategic Plan and the Core Practice Model/Shared Practice Principles for Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. A strength-based framework is presented for identifying, assessing, and addressing the unmet needs of children and families through a variety of skill-based activities.

USC Center on Child Welfare. Engaging Families to Identify Their Children's Underlying Needs. This two-day training for social workers enhances practice skills for building effective working relationships with children, families, communities, and professional partners to identify and address children's unmet needs in a timely, comprehensive manner through a solution-focused approach. The curriculum includes a one-day training for supervisors that underscores their vital role in mentoring social workers about building family and community relationships that effectively serve children's needs.

National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) (2008). Pathways to Partnerships with Youth and Families. Provides strategies for increasing youth and family involvement in all aspects of service delivery. Includes an organizational self-assessment tool to measure youth and family involvement and guidance for developing goals and change plans for the clinical and organizational/program levels.

Resource Center for Family-Focused Practice. The Core Practice Model: Engaging Families. Provides an overview of the effect of trauma on engagement, ways to develop a partnership on the Child and Family Team (CFT), and engagement approaches that assure family voice, choice, and preferences and that are responsive to cultural difference. Facilitating a Child and Family Team: Supporting Pathways to Mental Health. Provides a lesson plan, presentation and activities to teach the Core Practice Model and Team Building and to assess individual facilitation skills. Facilitating a Child and Family Team to Support Pathways to Mental Health, a series of workshops, was held from January to March 2014.

Parents Anonymous, Inc.This website provides tools for developing parent leaders, readiness assessment tools for working in shared leadership, and guidance for developing shared leadership plans. Additional resources include community engagement strategies, steps for developing programs, and tools for evaluating changes in practices and behaviors. Training and technical assistance are available from Parents Anonymous Inc.

This PowerPoint defines Meaningful Shared Leadership for positive results through parent leadership. Resources offered by Parents Anonymous are also listed.

Fostering Relationships. This organization is designed to support staff and volunteers who work with foster youth by providing resources, curricula, and expertise in Relationship-Based Practices for the benefit of staff and youth alike. Some content is available to all visitors. Registered users have access to additional materials. Fostering Relationships is a project of A Home Within. The website features publications, including Building a Home Within: Meeting the Emotional Needs of Children and Youth in Foster Care (2006) by Toni Heineman and Diane Ehrensaft, published by Brookes Publishing Co. and available for purchase through Amazon.