C.A.S.E. is excited to partner with 6 organizations that were chosen due to their deep expertise that can drive the Center’s success. Our collaborative team reflects the principles and expertise that the Children’s Bureau requires for this Center to advance, with top organizations on youth voice, family voice, community engagement, and the evaluation of capacity building and system change efforts.
Partners
The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) is the lead organization for the National Center. C.A.S.E. is nationally recognized for its pioneering work in adoption-competent mental health services and fostering the development of a highly skilled adoption-competent workforce through its National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI), also funded by ACF.
Our Partners
Area of Expertise: Lived Experience/Capacity building
Area of expertise: Engaging all communities
Area of expertise: Adoption Competence/Data/Evaluation
Area of expertise: Capacity Building Evaluation/Data/Evaluation
National Adoption Association (NAA)
The National Adoption Association (NAA) is the largest and only national association focused exclusively on supporting public and private adoption professionals at all levels, including frontline workers, agency directors, and state adoption managers. Founded in 1982, NAA serves 500 members across the country, regularly convening members, to promote best practices in community engagement. For 4+ decades, NAA has built professional relationships with those who administer and interact with child welfare (CW) services, including two decades of operating CB’s program AdoptUSKids. NAA brings tested, effective techniques and dissemination strategies from AdoptUSKids, a strong national network, and reputation, to promote the National Center’s work. NAA’s dissemination activities will build bridges with MH systems to promote further development and training in issues related to separation, loss, grief, and trauma. NAA’s expertise, knowledge, and skills will help ensure the Center delivers services to all children and families.
National Foster Parent Association
The National Foster Parent Association (NFPA) is a respected national voice for foster, kinship, and adoptive families across the United States. NFPA will promote the Center’s work and disseminate findings through its networking, education, and advocacy programs including the NFPA Training Institute with 50+ online courses by experts in the field and over 2,400 students. NFPA will leverage its extensive reach including its Council of State Affiliates, a group of leaders of state foster care associations who work collaboratively to provide better support to the foster care community at the state and national level, and its 25,000 Facebook followers.
PolicyWorks
PolicyWorks is an independent, non-partisan program evaluation and policy research firm founded in 1995 that conducts needs assessments, program evaluations, and strategic policy analyses. It has developed numerous publications, practice tools, and related curricula that strengthen front-line practices in CW, criminal justice, education, and prevention fields and has served as an external evaluator for 9 federally funded, multi-year demonstration projects in CW, including CB’s Quality Improvement Center for Adoption. PolicyWorks will produce comprehensive landscape scans for The Center that build profiles of CW and MH systems and Medicaid funding patterns to help assess STT (states, tribes, territories) needs and for site selection. She will update scans annually and contribute to the development of the Repository.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center on Children, Families, and the Law (CCFL)
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center on Children, Families, and the Law (CCFL) was established in 1987 as a home for interdisciplinary research, evaluation, policy analysis, education, and community engagement on issues related to child and family policy and services. CCFL’s mission is “Helping the Helpers: Providing an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to improve systems and outcomes for children and families.” In 2021, CCFL received the Quality Program Award from the National Staff Development and Training Association for its innovative and interdisciplinary Child Protection and Safety Training Program, developed in collaboration with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NDHHS). CCFL will serve as the Evaluation Team for The Center.