Using Congregate Care What the Evidence Tells Us This report focuses on kids entering group settings for their first child welfare placement. It explores how likely this placement is, how long and stable it is, and how often it results in achieving permanence or a return to out-of-home care. Read More
A Blueprint for Embedding Evidence-Based Practices in Child Welfare Informed by best practices in implementation science, this report outlines a process for integrating evidence-based and evidence-informed programming into child welfare systems. Read More
When a Parent is Incarcerated A Primer for Social Workers Parenting from jail can be difficult without some help from assigned social workers. Read More
Keys to Your Financial Future Facilitator Guides This guide helps facilitators administer a curriculum aimed at strengthening the financial literacy and independence of young people who have experienced foster care. Read More
Aging Out of Foster Care in America This two-page infographic highlights the steep consequences of stopping foster care at 18 and offers a promising solution: extend high-quality, developmentally-appropriate services to age 21. It is a product of Success Beyond 18, a national campaign by the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative aimed at forging a better path for youth who are exiting foster care and entering adulthood. Read More
Rightsizing Congregate Care A Powerful First Step in Transforming Child Welfare Systems This report illustrates how the Annie E. Casey Foundation collaborated with New York City, Louisiana, Maine and Virginia to identify five levers of change, reduce the use of congregate care and improve other performance indicators. The report also includes data on key improvements in each jurisdiction. Read More
Improving Access to Public Benefits Helping Eligible Individuals and Families Get the Income Supports They Need In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increased vital resources such as food stamps, unemployment insurance and housing subsidies available to low-income families struggling through the recession. But not all families were able to gain access to and receive the benefits for which they were eligible. This report suggests that there is a need for funders, states, communities and the federal government to create more programs that low-income families can access. Read More
Data Snapshot on High-Poverty Communities Children Living in America's High-Poverty Communities This data snapshot highlights newly available national, state and city data in the KIDS COUNT Data Center that shows a 25% increase in the number of children residing in areas of concentrated poverty since 2000. Read More
Funding Effective Implementation of Evidence-Based Programs in Child Welfare This brief shares eight strategies to help child welfare agency administrators and partners fund and sustain evidence-based programs that benefit children and families. These strategies — presented in the context of a stage-based framework — consider the costs, funding streams, partnerships and allocation of resources that are both specific to child welfare systems and necessary for effective implementation. Read More
Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Adults Insights from the Ready4Work Reentry Initiative This report tells how the Ready4Work program, which aims to ease an ex-prisoner’s transition home, added a mentoring component to its suite of reentry support services. Readers will learn how 11 sites packaged this new component, who participated and what initial outcomes say about mentoring’s capacity for improving the lives of former inmates. Read More