National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI)

Listen in on the September 15, 2020 Child Welfare Worker Recognition Event to get reconnected to the heart work and hear Robin Leake, Jerry Milner, Victor Sims, Courtney Canova, and Dr. Lakeya Cherry express their appreciation for how you've adjusted your practice to serve families and children under such unprecedented and challenging conditions. Thank you for all you do!

During the COVID-19 crisis, child welfare workers are using technology to communicate with families, and foster parents are using technology to connect youth in their care to services and maintain connection between youth and their biological families. This webinar offers considerations and best practices to support child welfare workers as they use technology with the families they serve.

Coaching in the child welfare workforce often happens face-to-face or in context of daily work activities. With our shift to virtual work, face-to-face contact may have been curtailed but connecting and supporting growth does not need to stop. This session explores what stays the same and what adjustments must be made when coaching remotely.

Much of child welfare professional development, especially foundational training for new workers, takes place in-person. Because of the current situation, training needs to be available online in order to continue to meet the needs of our workforce. This webinar provides information on converting in-person experiences to virtual learning platforms, as almost anything that can be taught in the classroom can also go online (really!). Learn tips, tricks, and ways to overcome barriers.

During the COVID-19 crisis, child welfare workers provide critical services to their communities. As essential public servants, it is important that they have systems in place to ensure their safety during home visits and working in the field. This session explores how child welfare programs are innovating to protect their frontline workers’ physical, emotional, and psychological safety.

In these uncertain times, we are all presented with new concerns about ourselves, our teams, and those we love. With the unprecedented global crisis, our national child welfare workforce and leaders also find themselves facing new challenges and stressors as everything about the old “normal” is changing. In this session, Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer provides hopeful perspectives, concrete action steps and tools, and words of comfort and support for our workforce to help them manage through this crisis. Participants receive ideas to cope and prepare to be in the best position and condition possible as we begin to rebuild together.

With the child welfare workforce currently working from home, supervision is more important than ever to ensure continued quality service provision and to keep children safe and families together. Listen to this recording to hear how supervision is changing to respond to this new virtual world and what adjustments are being made in this environment.

This webinar, held on September 26, 2019, highlights the workforce development efforts of the Indiana Department of Child Services

Jennifer Gerber thought it was impossible to complete a master’s degree while juggling the demands of a child welfare career. In this podcast episode hear how support from a traineeship program through the University of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Department of Children, Youth, and Families helped her achieve her goals.

Within the world of child welfare, we have been given the task of empowering children, youth, and families who are faced with a variety of life challenges and obstacles. No matter how difficult the situation, when we focus on the mission and serve from the heart lives are positively impacted and transformed. This highly informative, inspirational and purpose-driven message addresses how every person within the child welfare system has the power to be a difference maker when their heart is emotionally connected to the jobs they perform. Furthermore, participants will be taught a variety of skills designed to enhance their professional abilities in the areas of building relationships, valuing others, exhibiting leadership and mastering service excellence. Individuals will leave this session motivated, recharged and with a renewed sense of purpose.