Strengthening Families Webinar: Manifesto 2.0: The Parent Edition

Join us on Thursday, November 14, from 3-4 pm ET / 12-1 pm PT for our Strengthening Families Webinar: Manifesto 2.0: The Parent Edition. During the webinar, our Parent Leader Network will share the brand-new parent edition of the Manifesto for Race Equity & Parent Leadership in Early Childhood Systems. This parent-led presentation will introduce

Strengthening Families Webinar: Draft Strategic Plan

This webinar engaged participants in reviewing and weighing in on a new strategic plan that is being developed for the Strengthening Families initiative. See how the plan is taking shape so far, and share your thoughts on what should be included and where you think we (CSSP and national, state, and local partners) should focus

Culture is Healing: Removing the Barriers from Culturally Responsive Services (Webinar)

In this webinar, community providers discuss the challenges they face in providing responsive services, including building evidence and operating in the context of restrictive “evidence-based” standards, as well as recommendations for actions state and federal policymakers can take to ensure all families have the support they need through expanding access and availability of programs that

Moving Beyond the Family Engagement Check Box: A Webinar

While many individuals and organizations, including funders, see the value of family engagement, they often struggle with the logistics of how to engage families. This webinar, by CSSP and Family Voices, provides an example of family engagement in systems level work.  Read the full Moving Beyond the Family Engagement Check Box: An Innovative Partnership to

Strengthening Families Webinar: Legal Partnering for Child and Family Health

This webinar highlighted how new kinds of partnerships with public interest law allies—including some underway through the DULCE Learning Network—can expand access to justice for families and strengthen the early childhood sector. We’ll be joined by MLPB, which has pioneered an integrative approach to linking early childhood stakeholders with legal problem-solving assets.   

Strengthening Families Webinar: Preventing Child Neglect by Building Protective Factors

This webinar included segments from one of the training sequences from the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds’ new four-part training, “Let’s Talk About . . . Preventing Child Neglect.” Participants were also introduced to the remaining three training sequences in the series and other valuable resources related to preventing child neglect. 

Local Voices Webinar: The Drivers of Change

This webinar offers perspectives from several cities that engaged in the decade-long Making Connections initiative, the lessons learned about building community capacity, and understanding how to ensure lasting change in communities.

Expectant and Parenting Youth: Inaugural Webinar

This webinar discusses implications of Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standards under the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act (H.R.4980) for expectant and parenting youth and their children in foster care.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: May 2015

This webinar focuses on exciting efforts around the country to implement Strengthening Families at the community level, including new framing from the CSSP and slides you can use in your own presentations.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: June 2015

This webinar focuses on professional development strategies. Jessica Sugrue leads a group of other experienced trainers in a “fishbowl” conversation about strategies in implementing Strengthening Families across different fields.

getREAL Webinar: #BornPerfect

In this webinar, Samantha Ames gives an overview of so-called “conversion therapy” and provide tools for attendees to become advocates to end these dangerous and discredited practices.  

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: July 2015

This webinar discusses efforts in three states to help parents build protective factors through their involvement in the corrections systems—including how correctional systems are taking a protective factors approach with parents.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: March 2016

This webinar focuses on how the Strengthening Families approach aligns with healthy relationship and marriage education. Also, Ted Futris and David Schramm discuss the National Extension Relationship and Marriage Education Model.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: May 2016

This webinar discusses CSSP’s framework of community approaches to toxic stress—how efforts to build protective factors, reduce sources of toxic stress, and implement trauma-informed care fit together at the community level.

Strenghtening Families Networking Webinar: August 2016

This webinar discusses how supportive housing programs help families build protective factors, including how four sites piloted a protective factors approach in supportive housing for families on the brink of child welfare involvement.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: October 2016

In this webinar, Tabitha Kelly discusses how Arlington County infuses a protective and promotive factors approach throughout their Division of Child and Family Services—including child welfare and behavioral health services.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: March 2017

This webinar discusses the mini-grant process that Strengthening Families West Virginia uses to help communities and programs make small but significant changes to help families build their protective factors.

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: May 2017

This webinar presents a new resource from Butterfly – Trainings that Transform. Also, Maureen Durning and Jane Zink discuss their book, “STRONG: Teaching the Strengthening Families Protective Factor Framework to Parents and Professionals.”

Strengthening Families Networking Webinar: June 2017

This webinar discusses how family resource centers and family support networks help families build protective factors. It includes updates from the CSSP and the Alliance about ongoing work and opportunities.

EPY Learning Collective Webinar

This webinar presents and demonstrates a new interactive online community where professionals can exchange ideas, resources, innovative approaches, and policies to improve outcomes for young people in or transitioning from foster care.

getREAL Webinar: Allegheny

This webinar provides participants with information about work done the first two years of getR.E.A.L Allegheny. It details the progress, challenges, successes, and opportunities the project affords children and families.

A Prenatal to Three Blueprint for Child Well-Being and Child Welfare Prevention

This webinar focuses on the report, “A Prenatal to Three Blueprint for Child Well-being and Child Welfare Prevention: Building a Primary Prevention Continuum to Support the Health and Well-Being of Children Prenatal to Three,” including guiding principles and strategies for building and enhancing a comprehensive continuum that meets the needs of young children and their

Community Conditions that Strengthen Families

This webinar discussed work that explores how community conditions that strengthen families can be improved. Listeners learned about the results of a survey done earlier this year and the themes we found in the survey. Find the report related to this webinar here. You can access the executive summary here.

Part II: Common Threads to Transform Systems

This webinar takes a deeper dive into the barriers that are likely holding back or limiting large-scale adoption of the common practices among pediatric primary care teams nationwide. We will describe our recommendations for action: (1) building national leadership for systems change, (2) identification and elimination of specific systemic barriers, and (3) supporting pediatric primary

Part I: Common Threads To Transform Everyday Practice

This webinar shares the 14 Common Practices and describes examples of how they are being implemented by the exemplary programs and pediatric settings CSSP visited and highlights stories from the staff and families from those site visits. This webinar shares learnings from Fostering Social and Emotional Health: Common Threads to Transform Everyday Practice and Systems;

Effective Strategies for Engaging the Pediatric Community

Dr. Jill Sells, MD, FAAP spoke to attendees about how to more effectively engage the pediatric community in early childhood partnerships which help families connect to prenatal-to-three supports. She shared ways in which medical providers could be unique assets in the work and helped participants understand realities of the pediatric practice. Dr. Sells explained barriers

Strengthening Families Webinar: During a Pandemic and Beyond

Experts discussed how family support professionals and organizations have adapted to serve families during the COVID-19 outbreak, and what we are learning that we will carry forward from this time. Find the resources shared by the panelists here.

November 2018 Strengthening Families Networking Webinar

This video explains revisions to the Head Start Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework and adaptations for Early Childhood Systems, intended for state, tribal, and territory leaders, administrators, providers, parents, and other decisionmakers in early childhood systems and programs. 

Strengthening Families Webinar: Technical Assistance Clinic

Cailin O’Connor of CSSP and Martha Reeder of the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds responded to questions from participants about implementation of Strengthening Families. We covered a wide range of topics, including implementing Strengthening Families in a medical setting, how protective factors are related to ACEs, and how we can reach families

Our Identities, Ourselves: Anti-Racist Guidelines for Collecting Data on Race & Ethnicity

In this webinar, learn best practices and tools for centering equity and constituent voice in data collection, analysis, reporting, and use. Topics explored included: the best ways to capture race and ethnicity within data systems; how frontline workers can better ask nonjudgmental questions about young people and families’ identities throughout the life of a case;

Ensuring Families Receive the Child Tax Credit

This webinar, from the Automatic Benefit for Children (ABC) Coalition, shared innovative outreach strategies to raise awareness about the child tax credit and how families can sign up. 

Building Blocks for Early Learning Communities

This webinar focused on a new digital tool available for communities to assess and improve upon their efforts to work across systems to become an Early Learning Community – and learn about how the building blocks of Early Learning Communities point us toward opportunities to help families build protective factors throughout our communities.

Project DULCE Updates

This webinar shared the latest information on DULCE, what we are learning about implementation, and plans for expansion.

Youth Thrive Alive! Forum: Concrete Supports through Direct Cash Transfer

The YouthNPower: Transforming Care Collective, which in 2023 launched the first direct cash transfer (DCT) pilot for youth transitioning from foster care, designed with young people who have lived expertise in the child welfare system. During this webinar, the panel shared: an introduction to the intergenerational YouthNPower collective and its approach combining research, advocacy, and

Culture is Healing: Removing the Barriers Facing Providers of Culturally Responsive Services

Ensuring child and family well-being requires a radically different, anti-racist response of supports that center the voices of diverse children and families of color, are dignified and strengths-based, and that are offered in spaces they trust. As this brief highlights, community-based organizations across the country are striving to answer that call despite numerous barriers. This

Youth Thrive Alive! Forum: Activate Tools for 2023 and Beyond January

In 2022, Youth Thrive created new, dynamic tools and resources that youth-serving agencies and organizations can use to understand adolescent development and promote youth well-being. In this webinar, we showcased the latest tools and resources, including the Social Connections Module, co-developed by Dr. Julie Radlauer-Doerfler, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Collectively.

Factors Associated with First and Repeat Births Among Females Emancipating From Foster Care

CSSP’s Youth Power, Parent Power initiative partnered with New Jersey’s Montclair State University and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) on a youth-driven research project to explore the risk and protective factors associated with first and repeat births among females emancipating from foster care. Young parents with lived experience identified the research questions, analyzed the

How We EndUP: Black Feminist Dreams for the Future

This webinar addressed how Black feminist theory and understandings, including reproductive justice, guides us toward the abolition of the family policing system and the creation of (envision) a society where children, families, and communities are no longer over surveilled by state systems and have the power and resources for what they need to live freely

Supporting the First 1,000 Days of A Child’s Life: An Anti-Racist Blueprint for Early Childhood Well-Being and Child Welfare Prevention

To support the health and well-being of children and families of color, we must implement comprehensive strategies that address systemic and institutional racism. This report offers a blueprint for creating equity-centered, anti-racist policies that support the health and well-being of children and families of color. Watch a webinar on the Blueprint here. Download Toolkit to

Community Development and Early Childhood: Partnering for Better Outcomes

Attendees learned about a project bringing early childhood partners together with housing and community development providers to better serve families with young children. This webinar also provided information about what these partners have to offer each other and how they can work together to improve outcomes for young children

Family Voices in Early Relational Health

This webinar brings a discussion by the PSU research team and participating parents of some of the key themes that emerged as well as their recommendations for how the child and family health system can be more supportive to their family relationships. Then three national discussants  each discuss the importance of the findings and implications

Supporting Permanency for LGBTQ+ and Gender Expansive Youth

This session is one of six in the CASCW Fall Webinar Series “Supporting Permanency and Transitions to Adulthood for Youth in Care.” Presented by Vida K. Khavar, MA, LMFT, getREAL Project Director and Bill Bettencourt, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Strengthening Families 101

This webinar provided a Strengthening Families introduction for people who are new to the protective factors framework and the Strengthening Families approach. It also served as a free, pre-conference training for people attending the Together for Families conference October 14-16, 2020, but is open and available to anyone who would like an introduction or refresher

Advancing a Family-Centered Community Health System

This webinar discussed the elements of the FCCHS that when adopted and coordinated, can drive transformation at the system, community, and policy levels and bring forward commentaries from thought leaders and advocates. Speakers include David Willis, MD and Dr. Shadi Houshyar of CSSP, Matt Biel, MD of Washington, DC’s Early Childhood Innovation Network, and Molly

Advancing a Family-Centered Community Health System: A Community Agenda Focused on Child Health Care, Foundational Relationships, and Equity

The fundamental elements for advancing family-centered community health systems for young families exist today and now is the time to bring them together in an approach that is conceptually coherent. This paper outlines these elements which, when adopted and coordinated, can drive transformation at the system and community level. Listen to a webinar on FCCHS.

Youth Thrive Alive! Forum: The Impact of Isms on Well-being

This webinar, part of the quarterly Youth Thrive Alive! forums, worked to highlight the structural, systemic and institutional inequities that are persistent barriers to youth thriving and achieving their goals. Presenters discussed how various Ism’s such as racism, ageism, and sexism impact youth well-being.

Applying CSSP’s Anti-Racist Intersectional Frame to Our Work

Attendees learned about the anti-racist intersectional frame developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), and to explore its application to CSSP’s Strengthening Families work and other projects related to young children and their families. The webinar also discuss opportunities to apply the frame within your own Strengthening Families work in your

Early Relational Health and Protective Factors

This webinar offered an opportunity to reflect on the importance of foundational relationships and how this work can strengthen the protective factors framework and be integrated with your implementation of Strengthening Families.

Building Relationships Framing Early Relational Health

This webinar presented key findings from the FrameWorks Institute’s research and recommendations about communicating the importance of early relational health to non-experts along with commentary from national leaders about the importance of these perspectives.

Engaged Communities Preventing Child Abuse: The 90by30 Story

This webinar discussed 90by30, a community-campus partnership based in Lane County, Oregon whose stated mission is to decrease child abuse 90% by the year 2030. This initiative is housed at the University of Oregon’s Center for the Prevention of Abuse and Neglect (CPAN), a community engagement, public health model using the Strengthening Families Protective Factors

Local Financing Strategies for Early Childhood: Examples from Two Communities

During this webinar, representatives from two EC-LINC communities shared how they created funding for local early childhood initiatives and discussed the successful ballot initiative that established the CSCPBC organization and the role it plays as a local funder of early childhood services in Palm Beach County. The speakers also shared tips on how to be successful

Eliminating Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Mortality

Cristina Novoa, senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress (CAP), outlined a comprehensive policy framework to eliminate racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality. Participants learned about opportunities for federal action as well as innovative local approaches. Ms. Novoa also shared factors contributing to racial disparities, including not only racism, but also underinvestment

Making Residential Treatment Safer for LGBTQ+ Youth

This webinar shares the journey of how Indian Oaks Academy, through an inclusive institutional change process, established a facility culture that is supportive and accepting when working with LGBTQ+ youth.

Expectant and Parenting Youth: Lessons from the Field

This webinar presents an approach to ensuring that every EPY is connected to a mentor—including collaborative partnerships creating a shared system for recruitment, capacity building, tracking impact, and continuous quality improvement. 

Shared Results: Outcomes & Metrics

Measuring the Performance of Local Early Childhood Systems Click here to let CSSP know if you use any of the tools in this toolkit, or to share your feedback on them. Coordinated, community-based early childhood systems connect many types of services, supports and opportunities for young children and their families. When these systems function well,

Building Parent Partnerships

Tools Growing and Sustaining Parent Engagement: A Toolkit for Parents and Community Leaders Building Parent Partnerships to Strengthen Families (PowerPoint) Strong Families: A brochure for parents about the protective factors (PDF and Word) Building Resilience in Troubled Times: A Guide for Parents (PDF or web page) Strengths-Based Practice in Troubled Times (PDF) Help Me Grow Vermont developed

Pediatrics Supporting Parents

The Pediatrics Supporting Parents project leverages and enhances the standard of care in the pediatric well-child visit to support social and emotional development.

National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement

CSSP is part of a national consortium supporting the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (NCPFCE), which seeks a common vision for and the promotion of exemplary practices for parent, family, and community engagement in the early care and education field.

Passing the Baton

CSSP is proud to present a series of essays proposing actionable new insights and ideas about how to dramatically improve the well-being of children, young people, families, and communities, with racial justice as both an underlying value and a “North Star” goal. In keeping with CSSP’s bias for action, these essays revolve around two key

Ensuring Families Receive the Child Tax Credit (Webinar)

By July 15th, nearly 39 million families, covering 88% of children, will have automatically received their first month’s Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments, helping them with the cost of raising children. However, for the CTC to fulfill its potential to cut child poverty nearly in half, it must reach the nearly nine million children whose

How Public Systems Can Strengthen Community Service Providers

“A recent­ly released report from the Cen­ter for the Study of Social Pol­i­cy (CSSP) high­lights the chal­lenges encoun­tered by com­mu­ni­ty-based pro­grams that serve cul­tur­al­ly diverse fam­i­lies. Fund­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, Cul­ture Is Heal­ing: Remov­ing the Bar­ri­ers Fac­ing Providers of Cul­tur­al­ly Respon­sive Ser­vices, pro­pos­es con­crete pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions to address obsta­cles to the avail­abil­i­ty, financ­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of

Help Shape the Future of Strengthening Families!

We are in the process of developing a new strategic plan for the Strengthening Families initiative. (Read more about the history of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework and its implementation around the country in a blog post from January, or check out all the materials in the Strengthening Families section of our website.) This

Moving Beyond the Family Engagement Check Box: An Innovative Partnership to Promote Authentic Family Engagement in Systems Change

Our latest product, Moving Beyond the Family Engagement Check Box: An Innovative Partnership to Promote Authentic Family Engagement in Systems Change, by CSSP and Family Voices provides valuable insight about best practices for engaging families as well as how to create and implement a process for engaging families in the national Pediatrics Supporting Parents (PSP) initiative to promote the social and emotional development (SED) of young children.

Medicaid and CHIP Provide Powerful Tools for Supporting Social and Emotional Development

Today, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, with our partners at Manatt Health, are excited to release a new resource, Fostering Social and Emotional Health through Pediatric Primary Care: A Blueprint for Leveraging Medicaid and CHIP to Finance Change, which is designed as a practical guide for advancing action in the pediatric primary

Building Protective Factors with Military Families

Throughout CSSP’s Strengthening Families initiative, ZERO TO THREE has been a critical partner in supporting providers to take a strengths-based, protective factors approach to families with infants and toddlers. Today we welcome a guest blog post from Julia Yeary, LCSW, ACSW, IMH-E®, Director of Military Projects at ZERO TO THREE, whose work focuses on supporting

Culturally Responsive Supports: The Details Matter for Families

In the words of one counselor CSSP interviewed who serves Native American youth, “On my team, I have three native clinicians from the local communities and [culture is] kind of weaved within the clinical approach… [Many young people] don’t have anybody who is knowledgeable about culture or in a position to teach them. Or maybe

Factors Associated with First and Repeat Births Among Females Emancipating From Foster Care

CSSP’s Youth Power, Parent Power initative partnered with New Jersey’s Montclair State University and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) on a youth-driven research project to explore the risk and protective factors associated with first and repeat births among females emancipating from foster care. Young parents with lived experience identified the research questions, analyzed the

getREAL: Good But is it Enough?

The getREAL initiative works to transform child welfare policy and practice in order to promote the healthy development of LGTBQ+ and gender expansive children and youth. We have been at this work and influencing the child welfare system for nearly a decade, and while we can say that—along with others—we have made inroads to the

Community Development and Early Childhood: Partnering for Better Outcomes

A growing body of research provides evidence that the places where children live, learn, and play have a significant impact on their health and development. Early childhood advocates increasingly recognize the importance of these community determinants of health and are paying more attention to the housing, neighborhood, and community conditions in which families are raising

Measuring the Performance of Early Childhood Systems: New Toolkit Available

Over the past decade, increasing numbers of early childhood leaders across the country have been working to build systems with two distinct features. First, they take as their mission the well-being of all of the young children in the community, not just those enrolled in a specific program or service.  Second, they bring together what

Two Communities Taking on Big Challenges: Local Efforts to Advance Equity in Child Welfare

In the United States (US), young children ages birth to four are the most racially and ethnically diverse age group. This diversity should mean that policy and practice are particularly focused on serving the needs of this ever-growing, diverse population. Unfortunately, policy has not been responsive to the needs of children and families of color

Why We getREAL

In 2012, CSSP launched getREAL (Recognize, Engage, Affirm, and Love), an innovative initiative designed to help transform and influence child welfare policy and practice to promote the healthy development of sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (otherwise known as SOGIE) for all children and youth. When it comes to youth well-being and healthy sexual and identity