RESOURCES

Knowledge that Drives Practice

Knowledge, training, and practical tools help professionals turn learning into action. The National Center offers adoption competent mental health resources designed to strengthen the workforce, support evidence-informed child-serving systems, and improve outcomes.

Recent Blog Posts

Stay informed about the issues shaping mental health and child welfare. Explore National Center blogs and resources featuring emerging research, promising practices, lived experience perspectives, and practical strategies for strengthening adoption competence.

Topics include child welfare and mental health collaboration, post-permanency mental health support, trauma-informed support for families, child welfare capacity building, and strategies for improving mental health access for children and families.

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Every Interaction Matters: Improving Care Through Adoption Competency

Sep 28, 2026

Why Adoption Competency Matters Across Healthcare Here’s an article from New England Children’s Behavioral Health Network that explores why adoption...

Leadership Perspective: Moving From Collaboration to Connection

Sep 23, 2026

Leadership Perspective: Moving From Collaboration to Connection Strong outcomes for children and families depend on more than collaboration in name....

Care for the Caregiver: Why Maternal Mental Health Matters for Children and Families

Sep 21, 2026

For families involved with child welfare, maternal mental health support may also need to address trauma, separation, loss, changing caregiving relationships, and permanency. An adoption competent lens helps professionals respond to these interconnected experiences.

Voices That Shape Care: Centering Lived Experience in Permanency & Adoption Competent Mental Health Care

LIVE WEBINAR: Oct 20, 2026 01:00 PM (EDT)

This webinar will explore why Permanency and Adoption Competent mental health care matters for youth, parents, caregivers, and families who have experienced adoption, foster care, kinship care, guardianship, reunification, and other permanency journeys.

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The ACN Workforce Brief

The Adoption Competency Network is dedicated to equipping providers and systems with the knowledge and skills needed to thoughtfully respond to the clinical and relational needs of children and families impacted by child welfare. Through this quarterly newsletter, we’ll share insights, resources, and updates that reflect this mission and the meaningful work happening across our network.

Read the latest newsletter

Recent Webinars

Build knowledge and skills through the National Center webinars designed for child welfare professionals, mental health providers, leaders, parents, advocates, and partners.

Sessions explore adoption competent mental health training, cross-system workforce training, trauma-informed child-serving systems, family and youth engagement, and other topics affecting children and families.

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Sustaining Ourselves While Serving Others

Q&A with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. Designed for child-serving professionals—including social workers, clinicians, health care providers, and educators—this interactive webinar explores how to sustain compassion while navigating trauma exposure, burnout, and moral distress.

In Their Backpack: The Added Weight of Loss & Grief for Students in Adoptive, Foster, Kinship, and Guardianship Families

In this webinar viewers will gain a deeper understanding of how trauma and loss impact students’ emotional regulation, behavior, and academic functioning. You will learn to recognize common school-based manifestations of grief, traumatic stress, and loss, and will leave with practical, permanency-focused, trauma-informed strategies that can be immediately applied to promote safety, connection, emotional processing, and academic success for students in adoptive, foster, kinship, and guardianship families.

Upcoming Events

Find out where the National Center will present, exhibit, and connect with partners nationwide. Conferences offer opportunities to share emerging practices, strengthen professional networks, and advance conversations about adoption competent mental health and child welfare collaboration.

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Zero to Three LEARN Conference

Oct. 27-29, 2026

Join us in Portland, OR, along with everyone supporting infants, toddlers, and families — educators, healthcare providers, mental health professionals, researchers, advocates, and policymakers.

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