The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network hosted a webinar in May 2023 to cover strategies for tribal programs wishing to engage in collaborative services to support kinship and grandfamilies. The webinar addressed how government or private organizations can best prepare for collaboration with tribes. Additionally, the webinar helped participants be able to discuss why grandfamilies and relative care providers can benefit from collaborative approaches among tribes, or between tribes and non-Native government or private service providers; become familiar with principles that support successful cross-cultural and cross-jurisdiction collaboration; and be able to explore and weigh several issues when planning a collaboration. The recording and presentation are available for review.

The Office for Family Assistance partnered with Children’s Bureau to develop the Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community (FAST-LC), which focused on preventing family involvement in the child welfare system through developing, implementing, and enhancing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)-Child Welfare partnerships and innovations. FAST-LC was a one-year initiative that involved eight state and two tribal TANF-Child Welfare partnerships. The FAST-LC launched in September 2023 and concluded in September 2024. OFA published the webpage that highlights various resources, including a journey recap for each participating site and research briefs.

The ways child welfare supervisors interact and supervise their teams are correlated with staff wellness, retention rates and job satisfaction, program operations, service delivery, and client outcomes. A key to engaging in trauma-informed supervisory practices in tribal child welfare is to make sure there are trauma-responsive practices in place to meet the needs of all staff. When staff are supported through the professional hazard of trauma exposure, they are better able to deliver responsive and quality services to our relatives and communities. This Center for Tribes resource highlights programmatic and supervisory tips that align with the six principles of a trauma-informed approach: safety, trust, culture and history, empowerment, peer support, and collaboration.

American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and families continue to be impacted by social policies and social work practices that seldom include their diverse cultural values, knowledge, and norms. This National Child Welfare Workforce Institute guide provides a curricular framework based upon the Council on Social Work Education’s 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, focusing on knowledge, skills, values, and evidence-based practices that social workers and social work students must apply when working with AI/AN children and families.

The Center for Native Child and Family Resilience (CNCFR) worked alongside a group of experts in cultural resilience, Tribal child welfare, and trauma-informed practice to review the current trauma-informed care literature and existing programs with the intention of creating a trauma-informed training specifically for use in Tribal child welfare (TCW) programs. Through discussions on their research, the group noted many trauma-informed programs and practices were already in place. The workgroup decided that instead of centering on trauma, they wanted to create a training that centers and builds upon the resilience in the community. This CNCFR training promotes and centers the healing and wellness of individuals, families, and communities—and encourages the community to build their own vision for a resilience-oriented TCW organization.

This Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development video highlights an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians elder explaining historical trauma and why child welfare workers must address historical trauma to be successful in their work.

The Office of Family Assistance and Children’s Bureau’s initiative, “Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community” (FAST-LC), supported ten TANF and child welfare programs across the country as they worked to promote innovative prevention strategies to mitigate and reduce families’ involvement with the child welfare system through partnerships between TANF and Child Welfare programs. The FAST-LC Site Journeys capture and convey the participating states’ and tribes’ motivation for change, the partnership and prevention innovations they developed and implemented, and the lessons they learned from their journey experiences. This site journey features Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s FAST-LC story.

The Office of Family Assistance and Children’s Bureau’s initiative, “Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community” (FAST-LC), supported ten TANF and child welfare programs across the country as they worked to promote innovative prevention strategies to mitigate and reduce families’ involvement with the child welfare system through partnerships between TANF and Child Welfare programs. The FAST-LC Site Journeys capture and convey the participating states’ and tribes’ motivation for change, the partnership and prevention innovations they developed and implemented, and the lessons they learned from their journey experiences. This site journey features Chippewa Cree Tribe’s FAST-LC story.

This brief synthesizes the work the states and tribes participating in the Office for Family Assistance and Children’s Bureau’s joint-initiative “Families Are Stronger Together Learning Community” (FAST-LC) accomplished. It highlights implementation issues and the strategies the participating states and tribes employed in their partnership efforts and their prevention-oriented activities. The brief also identifies sustainability issues the sites confronted and addressed.