Resources

• A Family's Guide to the Child Welfare System
  Written in a simple, question-and-answer format, and grounded in the experiences of families and child welfare professionals from across the country, A Family's Guide is meant to be a tool to help families learn about: experiences other families have had with the child welfare system; child welfare laws and policies that influence the actions and decisions of child welfare workers and courts; ways to advocate for their family's rights (their own and their children's); responsibilities of parents involved with the child welfare system; and practical tips from other parents. A Family's Guide also can be used by the child welfare agencies to build positive relationships with families and increase family participation in service planning, as a tool in family support groups, and to train new workers and foster parents

• PrACTice Matters: Involving Parents as Partners in Youth Development
  Young people, youth service providers, educators, and researchers agree: Parents’ actions and attitudes have major impacts on young people’s development. They agree on something else, too: sometimes the best ways to involve parents in youth development efforts are elusive. Parents and other adults understand that they play important roles in young people’s lives, but also sometimes find it challenging to build and maintain open lines of communication and to stay “connected” consistently. Community-wide youth development efforts see the engagement of parents (and other significant adults) as essential assets to their work. This prACTice matters issue addresses some approaches and challenges to parent involvement.

• Research FACTs and Findings: Parent Child Relations
  Parent-child conflict increases as children move into adolescence. Although this trend is not inevitable, it is common and can be quite distressing for parents and adolescents.

• Restoring Fathers to Families and Communities: Six Steps for Policymakers
  This guide was developed by the Social Policy Action Network to help fill the gap in information available for state and local officials about what they can do, legislatively and administratively, to help fathers help their children. Each of the six steps offered include a menu of policy options and provide detailed examples of what states, communities, and nonprofits nationwide are already doing to promote responsible fatherhood.

• A Study of African American and Latino/Latina Parents in the United States
  The vast majority of African American and Latino/Latina parents are working hard to raise strong, healthy, and successful children and adolescents, and most feel they are doing well as parents. Yet they are doing so in the face of multiple challenges in their communities and society. Furthermore, most have little support beyond their immediate family to help them as parents. Those are the major conclusions of this study of 685 African American parents and 639 Latino/Latina parents in the United States by Search Institute and YMCA of the USA.

• Parent Leadership Network
  The Parent Leadership Network is an online community for parents to connect with one another to develop and expand their leadership skills and opportunities. This e-mail group is also an important resource for others who work with or are interested in working with Parent Leaders in shared leadership such as staff, community members, professionals, and policymakers. Parent Leaders are parents, grandparents, kinship care providers, foster parents or anyone in a parenting role who takes action to accomplish goals that result in better outcomes for children, families and communities. Shared leadership is successfully achieved when parents, staff and community members build effective partnerships and share responsibility, expertise and leadership in areas that affect families and communities. If you are a staff member or other professional interested in working with Parent Leaders, the Parent Leadership Network is a resource for you to obtain input and learn shared leadership strategies directly from Parent Leaders in order to better meet the needs of families in your community.