National Center for Child Welfare Excellence
NCCWE Weekly Update 5/21/2015


National Foster Care Month 2015
Get to Know the Many Faces of Foster Care
May is National Foster Care Month, a month set aside to acknowledge foster parents, family members, volunteers, mentors, policymakers, child welfare professionals, and other members of the community who help children and youth in foster care find permanent homes and connections. During National Foster Care Month, we renew our commitment to ensuring a bright future for the nearly 400,000 children and youth in foster care, and we celebrate all those who make a meaningful difference in their lives.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/fostercaremonth/more/about/

A Close New Look At 'Close To Home'
In late 2012, New York City launched one of the most ambitious juvenile justice reforms in the nation: Instead of sending city kids who break the law to lockups Upstate, the city placed all but the most serious offenders in small group homes in the five boroughs.

The investigation reveals that Close to Home programs have righted themselves after a rocky start, marred by high incidence of kids going AWOL from group homes and high staff turnover. Incidents of residents going AWOL shrank by more than 50% in Close to Home’s second full year of operation. The rate of kids being returned to Upstate facilities also decreased, even as the number of offenders in the program steadily grew.
http://www.centernyc.org/close-to-home-cover

Improving Child Welfare Outcomes through Family Engagement:
Using Customer Service Concepts to Recruit and Develop Resource Families
This NRCDR webinar will address how customer service concepts can be applied to child welfare systems to strengthen efforts to recruit and develop resource families to meet the needs of children and youth in care. Presenters will discuss the benefits of engaging and supporting different groups of key stakeholders ("customers"), including child welfare staff and prospective and current foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
Thursday, June 11th, 3:00-4:30 PM EDT / 2:00-3:30 PM CDT / 1:00-2:30 PM MDT / 12:00-1:30 PM PDT
http://nrcdr.org/news-and-e-notes/story?k=customer-service-webinar

ME: State Amongst Top Leaders in Child Welfare (Includes video)
Maine is one of the top four states, with 94 percent of foster children being matched with a family, as opposed to an 84 percent average nationwide. A factor that helps Maine's numbers is it's Kinship Care Policy, which matches foster children with members of their family rather than placing them in a group home.
http://www.foxbangor.com/news/local-news/9345-maine-amongst-top-leaders-in-child-welfare.html

Healing Child Sexual Abuse in Tribal Communities
A recent article in the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's (APSAC's) news journal APSAC Advisor shares information on Pathway to Hope (PTH), an indigenous approach to guiding the process of community awareness, acceptance, and healing from child sexual abuse. Developed by and for Alaska Native communities, the PTH curriculum can be adapted to the specific needs, culture, and practices of the Native communities in which it is implemented, and it has been adapted and implemented in several American Indian and Canadian indigenous communities.
Learn more about PTH in "Pathway to Hope: A Tribal Community-Based Empowerment Curriculum to Heal Child Sexual Abuse," by D. Payne, APSAC Advisor, 1, 2014, available at
http://www.tribal-institute.org/2014/E8-HO.pdf 

New Website Focuses on Hispanic Children and Families
Child Trends, Abt Associates, and other university partners established the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families (the Center) in 2013. Supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, the Center aims to enhance the lives of low-income Hispanic communities in the areas of early care and education, healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, and poverty and economic self-sufficiency.
The Center's new website offers easy navigation and a visually appealing presentation of information relating to the Center's mission and goals, focus areas, resources, and fellowship program. Through capacity building, training, fellowships, research, and by increasing knowledge of the three focus areas, the Center seeks to help programs and policies better serve the U.S. Hispanic population.

Access the site at http://www.childtrends.org/nrc/
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Gerald P. Mallon, DSW, LCSW
Julia Lathrop Professor of Child Welfare
Executive Director
National Center for Child Welfare Excellence
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
A Service of the Children's Bureau
2180 Third Avenue. 7th Floor
New York, NY 10035
http://www.nccwe.org
mallong@aol.com