This brief assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on kinship care; it also defines kinship care and the role that kinship caregivers play in their respective families. Ways to support kinship caregivers are illustrated, including increased funding support and temporary changes in licensing requirements.

In honor of May’s National Foster Care Month, the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau writes in this blogpost that incorporating family voice into the permanency-planning process and encouraging collaboration between parents and resource parents can help the community, the courts, and related professionals inform a highly supportive child welfare agency culture. The blogpost provides a link to the updated National Foster Care Month website, which includes new resources and outreach tools showing how partnerships between parents and children, agencies, community organizations, and the courts can help support reunification and strengthen family and community connections.

This letter from the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau provides program instruction and announces changes to allow videoconferencing for monthly caseworker visits as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter also identifies changes in the Child and Family Services Review Program Improvement Plans, Title IV-E Eligibility Reviews, flexibility for conducting child abuse and neglect investigations by state and local child protective services agencies, and other legislative and regulatory flexibilities.

The Aspen Institute’s Ascend initiative has launched a webinar series to cover 2Gen approaches that support the health, economic opportunity, and education of low-income families as they recover and move forward from the COVID-19 pandemic. Upcoming webinar topics are Child Support: Implications and Useful Lessons around Child Support, Parent Voice During COVID-19: Maintaining Feedback Loops, Stopping Behavioral Health and Substance Use Disorders Where They Start: Prevention and Treatment in Adolescence, and State Leadership During COVID-19 and Beyond. Recordings of previously held webinars on Telehealth and 2Gen, State Opportunities and Challenges in Advancing Child Care Innovation, and New Frames for a New Time are available.

The National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics is hosting a series of virtual workshops that address research on topics of interest to human service professionals throughout the summer. Future workshops will cover Machine Learning in Human Services Contexts, Cross-System Collaboration to Serve Justice-Involved Clients, and the Family First Prevention Services Act. Recordings of previously held workshops on TANF Responses to COVID-19 and Domestic Violence during COVID-19 are available.

This recorded webinar from the Annie E. Casey Foundation illustrates ways that state child welfare and substance use disorder officials can utilize the Family First Prevention Services Act to help families affected by substance misuse. Topics covered in the webinar included: discussion of the Family First Act’s substance use disorders provisions, opportunities to implement the law to benefit affected families, and the importance of collaboration between child welfare and substance abuse agencies. Speakers included representatives of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Children and Family Futures, ChildFocus, and the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors.

This guide from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration includes topics and resources to serve women who are reentering communities after incarceration and intends to help them succeed. The guide is a checklist that seeks to: identify critical reentry needs; address substance use disorders; build links to mental health care; address physical and reproductive health care; provide culturally competent services; provide trauma-informed services; build healthy, trusting relationships; reestablish family relationships; facilitate payment of justice system fines and fees; and increase self-efficacy through certified peer specialists.

This issue brief from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) highlights key points addressing intimate partner violence and child abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic, where staying at home may not be safe for those who have previously experienced mistreatment or where current economic conditions might spark mistreatment that would not have otherwise existed. The brief also provides links to resources from the Addiction Technology Transfer Center, the National Hispanic and Latino Addiction Technology Transfer Center, and SAMHSA’s partner, the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health.

This set of audio interviews features birth parents and foster parents discussing the need for strong birth and foster parent relationships. Co-parenting approaches are being implemented by state and local child welfare and adoption agencies across the country, and these field interviews cover potential ways to help birth and foster parents directly work toward reunification. These first-hand accounts also illustrate ways to generate support to implement this co-parenting approach nationally.

This compendium covers the impact of COVID-19 on early child development and offers a set of briefs and tool kits on how to support children and caregivers during the coronavirus pandemic. There is also a podcast on the brain science of how responses to COVID-19 effect healthy child development.