Child Welfare Archives - National Wraparound Initiative (NWI)
Stories of Navigating Youth and Family Systems
January 13, 2025 | NWI
This podcast series features authentic stories shared by individuals who have navigated various youth and family systems. Each episode offers a unique perspective on their encounters within these systems and solutions to the challenges they faced.
Crucial Conversations About Healthy Romantic Relationships
January 13, 2025 | NWI
This toolkit focuses on three critical domains of healthy romantic relationships: communication, such as sharing thoughts/feelings; boundaries/limits, including setting, enforcing, and respecting boundaries and limits; and shared power, such as negotiating roles and responsibilities. This toolkit is for professionals who support teens and youth who experience the child welfare and/or justice systems, homelessness, and/or disconnection from school and work.
Youth Leaving Foster Care at High Risk for Suicide
December 7, 2024 | NWI
Roughly one-quarter of young adults in foster care in California have attempted suicide, and their rate of suicidal behavior is nearly three times that of peers who aren’t in government care, according to a recently published study and policy brief.
What Foster and Adoptive Parents Need to Know About Child Trauma
July 28, 2024 | NWI
Early childhood trauma affects kids on a physiological level, and can cause behaviors ranging from detachment to clinginess to violent outbursts. Foster and adoptive parents are often unaware of just how tough it might be – emotionally and financially – to raise a child with a trauma background. This article explores how some caregivers have managed.
Spring 2024 Updates to the Family First Clearinghouse
June 16, 2024 | NWI
This Spring, the clearinghouse that greenlights foster care prevention services approved one new program that states can finance by drawing down federal funds aimed at lessening the use of foster care, rejected nine others, and announced 16 new programs up for consideration.
Colorado Decreases Financial Strain for Parents With Children in Foster Care
June 16, 2024 | NWI
Colorado families whose children are placed in foster care will no longer automatically be required to make child support payments – a practice that may delay reunification – thanks to a Colorado Department of Human Services rule change implemented in 2023 and recently turned into law.
Housing Support Improves Outcomes for Families Involved in Child Welfare
May 13, 2024 | NWI
A new report describes how a program aimed at increasing housing security has had positive impacts on children and families involved with the child welfare system.
Study Examines Rates of Mental Health Issues Among Children in Child Welfare Custody
April 8, 2024 | NWI
A recent study of general hospital admissions among youth aged 12–17 years compared rates of mental health disorders among children who were in child welfare custody and a control group of children not in child welfare custody. The children and adolescents in the child welfare system had higher rates of problems across a wide variety of diagnoses.
Foster Care Disparities for Youth with Intellectual, Developmental Disabilities
April 8, 2024 | NWI
A new study describes racial and gender disparities in foster care involvement among young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Giving Children a Voice in the Courtroom
April 8, 2024 | NWI
Two locations in Virginia are piloting programs through the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges to improve the handling of child abuse and neglect cases, reduce the number of children in foster care and improve outcomes for children in care. The programs encourage children to attend court and share their own perspectives.