Partners

The Family-Run Executive Director Leadership Association (FREDLA) is a national association of executive directors and leaders from family-run organizations (FROs) committed to all children, youth, and young adults with social, emotional, substance use, and multi-systems challenges, their families, and the agencies that serve them. Their role is to reflect the collective experiences of family organizations across the country in their work and to develop the tools they need to accomplish theirs. Many of its member organizations provide direct support to/services for child welfare and mental health systems. FREDLA has robust experience providing training, TA, and support to state and local agencies. FREDLA will guide The Center in multiple strategies to infuse family voice.

FosterClub is the national network for young people in foster care and is recognized as a field leader for youth engagement in the child welfare system with a membership of 40,000 and 250 youth leaders. FosterClub’s strategy engages, lived experience (LEx) Leaders to 1) provide direct support to young people who experience foster care; and 2) drive change in the foster care system informed and led by lived experience. FosterClub’s vision is that every young person who experiences foster care has what they need to live their best life. They will help ensure that The Center integrates engagement and voices of youth and families into all parts of our work, both in the creation and delivery of our services and how we work with States, Tribes, and territories to help them view youth and families.

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 and inclusive practices and increase competency in applying a race equity lens in all work with all families. 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, strong national network, and reputation, to promote the Center’s work, including targeting specific communities with culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate content. 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 in race equity will help ensure the Center delivers services using a race equity lens.

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 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) 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.