Child Welfare Professional Development

The Touchstones of Hope is a movement to redesign services for Indigenous children and families to embed Indigenous ways of caring for children and families into child welfare systems, policies, and practices.

This bi-monthly series invites Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples from the United States and Canada to actively engage in conversations about the five principles that are the foundation of the Touchstones of Hope: self-determination, holistic approach, culture and language, structural interventions, and non-discrimination.

This webinar reviews the thinking behind the child protection approach to child welfare in the United States and its impact on social work practice in child welfare. It examines the effectiveness of this approach in keeping children safe. It provides a different, rights-based, approach that shows promise of working better for all children. Finally, implications for social work practice and suggestions for implementing this different approach in social work in child welfare will be provided.

This webinar focuses on how understanding the continued development of the brain during adolescence can be applied to child welfare practice with older youth.

Drawing from research and the NASW curriculum, "Integrating Adolescent Brain Development into Child Welfare Practice with Older Youth," developed with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, participants will learn how brain development influences thinking and behavior; understand the link between early life trauma and the opportunity that adolescent brain development provides for healing; recognize how positive youth development principles can enhance outcomes for older youth; and recognize the value of using a strengths-based approach in authentically partnering with adolescents. Considerations will include socio-cultural assumptions, and how practitioners’ implicit biases impact working with young people.

NASW members have unlimited access to more than 25 international databases with thousands of documents from leading research institutions, think tanks and advocacy groups.

See a sample of the many resources in the NASW Research Library on the topic of immigration.

NASW members, join your colleagues and NASW staff for a free question and answer session, held every third Wednesday of the month from January through November, from noon to 1 pm ET.

Being a credentialed social worker makes all the difference. Social workers who want recognition for their professional achievements and who want to unlock new career paths come to NASW for their credentials.