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Join the National Conversation Around Child Abuse & Neglect

Digital Dialogues and Webinars

Digital Dialogues and Webinars

Our Digital Dialogues provide an opportunity for participants to engage directly with one or more experts in key topics in the field. Each 45-minute discussion is accompanied by additional resources for exploring the issue more fully.

Recent Digital Dialogues

Watch the Recording

Strengthening Families in a Changing Climate: Family Support in a Changing World

In this Digital Dialogue, we talk about how the family support field can respond and bring a family-centered lens, relational tools, and strengths-based practices to conversations about climate change, sustainability, and environmental justice. (51:21)

Keeping Families Connected: Supporting Parenting in the Context of Incarceration
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Keeping Families Connected: Supporting Parenting in the Context of Incarceration

Our conversation to explore strategies to support families dealing with the stress of the loss of a parent to incarceration. (47:03)

Watch the Recording

Creating and Sustaining Father Inclusion in Child Welfare

Our discussion with Center for States Family Consultants, all self-identified fathers, and a jurisdictional representative about the inclusion of fathers in child welfare systems. (54:23)

Recorded Digital Dialogues and Webinars

Child Welfare Innovations

  • Building Birth and Foster Parent Relationships to Promote Reunification
    Katie Biron (Family Connections Program), Shrounda Selivanoff (Children’s Home Society of Washington)

    » Hear from two representatives of the Birth and Foster Parent Partnership (BFPP) as they share their experiences in building and supporting meaningful partnerships.

  • NEWBuilding Brighter Futures: Helping Youth in Foster Care Successfully Transition to College
    M. Sebrena Jackson, PhD, LICSW, Associate Dean for Educational Programs and Student Services, University of Alabama

    » A conversation with Dr. Sebrena Jackson, founder of the National Social Work Enrichment Program (NSEP), giving youth in foster care the skills they need to not only survive in college, but thrive in life.

  • Birth Parent Foster Caregiver Partnerships: Taking a Family Systems Perspective
    Elayne Chou (Counseling Psychologist)

    » Family systems theory gives us a framework for understanding, supporting, or engaging in birth parent foster parent partnerships while acknowledging the complexity and the relational work they require.

  • Promoting Healthy Behaviors for Kinship Caregivers
    Kerry Littlewood, PhD, MSW (University of South Florida)

    » Kinship caregivers often prioritize their children’s needs before caring for their own, often delaying their own medical appointments and medication to purchase shoes for children, transportation, and food. Learn more about kinship caregiver health and an approach to working with kinship caregivers that emphasizes self-compassion and self-care. Created by a multi-disciplinary team of doctors and social workers, the Time for Me Toolkit helps peer navigators to support and provide psychoeducation to caregivers around six pillars of health management (Healthy Eating, Being Active, Healthy Sleep, Healthy Coping, Medical Adherence, and Self-Monitoring).

  • Caring for Kinship Caregivers
    Ana Beltran (Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network), John Cheney Egan ( Office of Cash Assistance, Illinois Department of Family Services and the Extended Family Support Program), Liliana Hernandez (Children’s Bureau)

    » In 2018, 2.7 million children were being raised in a kinship care family without a parent present – either with grandparents, aunts/uncles, siblings, or close family friends. While kinship caregivers provide essential support to children, many frequently need support to carry out this added responsibility effectively.

  • There’s no Place like Home: Youth Acceptance Project
    Vida Khavar, LMFT (Family Builders)

    » The Youth Acceptance Project uses a trauma-informed psycho-educational model to address the misinformation, resistance, fear, and grief with which families often struggle, reducing the time that children spend in foster care, reuniting children with their families and, in many cases, preventing separation in the first place.

Engaging Communities

  • Thinking About Prevention Through the Lens of Culture and Community: Prevention Programs in Tribal Communities
    Kimee Wind-Hummingbird, MSW (National Native Children's Trauma Center), Maria Guerra (Kenaitze Indian Tribe, Kenai, Alaska)

    » Explore how culture and community ground prevention strategies in tribal communities and how tribal prevention programs and non-tribal entities can work together to support native families.

  • Building Community Capacity to Support Perinatal Mental Health
    Sara Winkleman, Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families
    Mia Edidin, Perinatal Support Washington

    » Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are among the most common complications that occur in pregnancy or in the first 12 months after delivery. Yet despite the long-reaching negative impacts on parent-child attachment, child development, and financial stability, perinatal mental health (PMH) disorders often remain underdiagnosed, untreated, or under-treated.

  • Partnering to Address Childhood ACES
    Lori Clarke (Social Policy Institute, San Diego State University), Pradeep Gidwani (American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3)

    » Learn about ACES Aware, the California partnership between medical and community-based providers and the prevention sector.

  • Community Approaches to Toxic Stress
    Cailin O’Connor (Center for the Study of Social Policy)

    » Explore a new framework of community approaches to toxic stress within the broader context of healthy development and well-being.

Equity

  • NEWRedressing the Wrongs of History
    Kimee Wind-Hummingbird (National Native Children's Trauma Center)

    » Child welfare in the states can help to redress the wrongs of history by taking action and implementing the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) effectively.

  • Addressing the Systemic Inequities that Stand in the Way of Children's Well-Being
    Iheoma U. Iruka (Equity Research Action Coalition at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute)

    » Iheoma Iruka talks with us about systemic inequities impact young children and their families and how these inequities often become compounded once they enter our early childhood and child welfare systems.

  • All Children—All Families: Improving Practice For and With LGBTQ+ Youth and Families
    Ellen Kahn (Human Rights Campaign Foundation)

    » The Human Rights Campaign is working with hundreds of child welfare systems across the nation to build new and inclusive practices for LGBTQ+ youth and families. Learn more about the effective innovations being put into practice and tools you can use to shift practice in your own program and system.

Families Impacted by Incarceration

Fatherhood

  • NEWCreating and Sustaining Father Inclusion in Child Welfare
    Abdul-Rahmaan I. Muhammad (My People Clinical Services), Joey S. Cordero and Ricky Denwood (The Capacity Building Center for States)

    » Our discussion with Center for States Family Consultants, all self-identified fathers, and a jurisdictional representative about the inclusion of fathers in child welfare systems.

Polyvictimization

  • NEWImproving Our Response to Families Experiencing Domestic Violence
    Sara Block, JD (Managing Director of Ascend Justice, Loyola University Chicago School of Law)

    » The challenges child welfare systems face in effectively responding to families experiencing domestic violence and ideas for reform that enhance children's safety, stability, wellbeing, and healing in connection with their families and communities.

  • Missing From Care: Preventing and Responding to Sex Trafficking of Youth
    Melissa Snow (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC))

    » According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 1 in 6 of the children reported missing or run away are likely child sex trafficking victims. This startling figure demonstrates the safety risks and vulnerability facing children who are leaving home or foster care placements. Learn more about how we can work together to locate missing children, and how a trauma-informed and youth-centered recovery plan has the power to impact running behavior.

Prevention Planning

  • New Strengthening Families in a Changing Climate: Family Support in a Changing World
    Lisa Fujie Parks (Our Family Coalition), Kathryn Leigh Goetz (Be Strong Families)

    » In this Digital Dialogue, we talk about how the family support field can respond and bring a family-centered lens, relational tools, and strengths-based practices to conversations about climate change, sustainability, and environmental justice.

  • Asking for Help is a Sign of Strength: Changing Social Norms About Help Seeking
    Valerie Spiva Collins (FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention ), Valerie Lebanion (Community Collaboration for Children, Kentucky), Sasha Rasco (Texas Department of Family and Protective Services)

    » Discover how encouraging families to seek help can be centered as a child maltreatment prevention strategy.

  • Family and Child Well-Being System: Economic & Concrete Supports as a Core Component
    Clare Anderson (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago), Yasmin Grewal-Kök (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago)

    » This presentation examined the well-established link between economic hardship and child welfare involvement—especially neglect.

  • NCAPM 2022 Webinar: Healthy Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood: A Cornerstone of Primary Prevention
    Julie Fliss (Children's Bureau, ACF ), Bernadine Futrell (Office of Head Start, ACF), Walter Gilliam (Yale’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy), Katie Hamm (Office of Early Childhood Development, ACF), Lettie Hicks (Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI)), Melanie Martin (Maryland Family Network), Debbie Mays (Bright Beginnings Preschool), Aysha E. Schomburg (Children's Bureau, ACF), Elaine Voces Stedt (Children's Bureau, ACF)

    » This webinar reinforced the Administration's commitment to fostering healthy well-being during the critical infant, toddler, and pre-school years as a proactive, prevention approach that promotes positive long-term outcomes for children and their caregivers.

  • Laying the Groundwork: Paid Family Leave as a Prevention and Promotion Strategy
    Laura Weeldreyer (Maryland Family Network)

    » New data shows that policies to provide universal concrete and economic supports to families can have a powerful impact on child abuse and neglect prevention and broader family well-being. This Digital Dialogue covered one such strategy—paid family and medical leave. It explored what research tells us about the impacts of these concrete supports and provided information about one state’s journey to a statewide policy.

  • Planning for Prevention Month: Mobilizing Support for Families During Challenging Times
    Cynthia Peterson (Child Welfare Information Gateway ), Jeremy Long (Child Welfare Information Gateway), Caroline Lalonde-Hanna (Child Welfare Information Gateway), Nilofer Ahsan (Children’s Bureau Learning and Coordination Center)

    » This presentation discussed how it is more important than ever to use National Child Abuse Prevention Month (NCAPM) to mobilize communities to wrap around and support families.

  • Race Equity Within Our Prevention Work
    Aysha E. Schomburg (Associate Commissioner of the Children's Bureau), Elaine Voces Stedt (Director of the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN)), Charlyn Harper Browne (Senior Associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP)), Alexandra James (Chief Executive Officer at Be Strong Families), Laura Alfani (Strengthening Families Administrator at the State of Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families), Erinn Havig (Primary & Community Prevention Lead at the State of Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families)

    » Practitioners at the national, state, and local level discuss how we can concretely bring a race equity lens to our prevention work.

Resilience and Well-Being

  • The Science and Practice of Self-Regulation

    » Over the past decade, our field has learned a lot about the brain science behind trauma, adversity, and stress. In this Digital Dialogue, we will be focusing on what the science tells us about resilience, healing, and self-regulation. Learn more about the brain's anatomy and practical tips for identifying restorative practices that work when your body is under stress.

Trauma and Healing

  • NEWHelping Children Heal: Stabilizing Adoption and Foster Care by Supporting Children and Youth with Behavioral Intervention
    Kristin Chiappone (President, In-Home Behavioral Programs, FosterAdopt Connect)

    » In this Digital Dialogue, we discussed how unresolved trauma impacts children and youth and how the Behavioral Interventionist program supports adoption and foster care stability.

  • Supporting Children and Youth Coping with Unresolved Loss
    Deborah Langosch (GrandFamilies Outcome Workgroup (GrOW))

    » Ambiguous loss occurs when a parent is physically or emotionally absent, whether due to a child welfare removal, incarceration, substance use, or physical or mental health struggles. Children facing ambiguous loss are dealing with grief, uncertainty, confusion, and many other conflicting emotions. Ambiguous loss can cause challenging reactions and affect a child’s behavior, relationships, and learning. Understanding ambiguous loss, its impact on children, and how to promote resiliency and healthy coping for them, is important for both child welfare intervention and prevention communities.

  • Supporting Children and Youth Dealing with the Loss of a Parent or Caregiver
    Irwin Sandler, PhD (REACH Institute and Arizona State University), Deborah Langosch, PhD (GrandFamilies Outcome Workgroup (GrOW))

    » The loss of a parent or caregiver can have cascading impacts on child well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the impact on these losses because of the more than 250,000 children who are estimated to have lost a caregiver due to the pandemic. Dealing with loss and adequately supporting a grieving child are issues that predate the pandemic and include children who have lost caregivers to the termination of parental rights, incarceration, and other issues. Come learn more about how to work with caregivers so they can best support a grieving child.

Workforce Support

  • Preventing and Healing from Secondary Traumatic Stress: Taking an Organizational Approach
    Aurora Smaldone (Maine Behavioral Healthcare), Dory Hacker (Maine Behavioral Healthcare), Rebecca Hoffman Frances (Maine Behavioral Healthcare)

    » Maine Behavioral Healthcare is working with child and family-serving organizations across the state of Maine, implementing practices and protocols for workers experiencing secondary traumatic stress.

  • Supporting Child Welfare Staff: The Critical First 3 Months
    Alan O’Malley-Laursen (Olmsted County Child and Family Services, Rochester, MN), Cambria Rose Walsh (Chadwick Center for Children and Families at Rady Children’s Hospital)

    » This Digital Dialogue details organizational strategies for orienting new staff to a trauma-exposed work environment and supporting them during those critical first 3 months.

  • Workforce Well-Being—Centering Yourself to Better Support Others
    Amelia Franck Meyer (Alia Innovations)

    » Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer presents practical tips and tools for us to integrate well-being into our lives, our work, and our organizations to allow us to support those we serve in sustainable ways.