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LIVE WEBINAR: 

Understanding the Complex Mental Health Needs of Children in Child Welfare

Join us on November 19 at 1pm EST for a webinar with Laura Ornelas, LCSW, to learn practical strategies for integrating adoption competent care into your practice to support children who have faced abuse, neglect, trauma, and loss.

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Intensive Technical Assistance Launched in Illinois

The Center is excited to announce its partnership with Illinois, the second State to receive Intensive Technical Assistance services.

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Check out the latest career opportunities with the National Center. Join a dedicated team committed to advancing our mission and building bridges.

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The National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services

 

Building Bridges to Improve Mental Health

Learn how we can help

Our Mission

We will support States, Tribes, and territories (STTs) in building bridges between child welfare systems and state mental health systems, which is key to bringing about systemic change to improve the mental health outcomes for children and families impacted by the child welfare system. 

 

Funded by the United States Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Children’s Bureau in October 2023, the newly launched National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services will provide targeted technical assistance and evidence-informed training to strengthen coordination and capacity among child welfare and mental health systems to ensure that children, young adults, and families have access to mental health professionals who are trained to provide culturally and linguistically relevant child welfare competent mental health services to address separation, grief, trauma, and other challenges that can arise. This National Center represents an important way that the Children’s Bureau provides technical assistance to State, Tribes, and territories. 

The National Center will work together with The National Center for Diligent Recruitment and The National Center for Enhanced Post-Adoption Support on behalf of the Children’s Bureau to improve the safety, permanency, and well-being of children through productive partnerships with States, Tribes, and communities. 

 

 

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 Approach

The National Center has a three-tiered approach to achieving success:

  1. Establish a Knowledge Hub for everyone involved with child welfare that will increase the use of evidence-informed state-of-the-art adoption competent training for mental health practitioners.
  2. Provide on-site technical assistance to assist States, Territories and Tribes as they build collaborations with the mental health system to improve accessibility and coordination of competent services.
  3. Integrate the expertise of youth, young adults and families with lived experience and advance a broader lens of racial equity into the services.

 

The National Center will work with national leaders as well as parents and youth and young adults with lived experience to deliver new and enhanced support and training to States, Tribes, territories, and professionals to meet the needs of children and families. The Center will provide intensive technical assistance to six States, Tribes, and territories each year and will be funded at $4 million for each year of the five-year award.

 

Target audience

  • Child welfare professionals and systems
  • Mental health professionals and systems
  • Children, youth, and families who have experienced the child welfare system
  • Allied professionals in relevant areas of work that are also impacted by improved collaboration between child welfare and mental health
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Technical Assistance

Read more about the technical assistance The National Center will provide.
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Child Welfare Competent Mental Health

Learn about child welfare competent mental health and the value in increasing accessibility and availability of competent mental health services for children and families.
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Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

— Helen Keller

 

For two decades, the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) has been developing and providing specialized mental health services to thousands of foster, kinship and adoptive families. Through this pioneering work (and the work of our contributing partners), C.A.S.E. was a awarded a 5-year cooperative agreement to fund the National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services by the United States Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Children’s Bureau.

Meet all of our Partners