Child Welfare Foundations
The primary agency responsible for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect.
What is Child Protective Services (CPS)?
The most common reason a child enters foster care.
What is neglect?
Short-term services designed to prevent the removal of a child from the home.
What are family preservation or in-home services?
Trauma that occurs through repeated exposure or long-term adversity, often within caregiving environments.
What is complex trauma?
Professionals legally required to report suspected maltreatment.
Who are mandated reporters?
This type of maltreatment involves failing to meet a child’s basic needs, including food, shelter, and supervision.
What is neglect?
This permanency goal aims to reunite a child with their biological family.
What is reunification?
A voluntary service that provides parents education and support, often offered after an investigation.
What is parenting education / supportive services?
Foster youth experience this loss factor even when removed for safety, as it disrupts familiar relationships and routines.
What is ambiguous loss or separation trauma?
The federal law that sets minimum standards for defining child abuse and neglect and requires states to have mandatory reporting laws.
What is CAPTA (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act)?
A framework used in social work to understand the interaction between individuals and multiple systems (family, school, community).
What is the ecological systems theory?
Federal law requiring timely permanency planning and “reasonable efforts” to keep families together.
What is ASFA (Adoption and Safe Families Act)?
This model emphasizes building on family strengths rather than focusing solely on deficits.
What is a strengths-based approach?
A structured screening tool used by social workers to understand experiences that may impact development and behavior.
What is an ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) screen?
A core social work value requiring practitioners to demonstrate fairness, avoid bias, and serve all families.
What is social justice?
This assessment tool helps determine whether a child is safe at home or requires immediate protective intervention.
What is a safety assessment?
A legal arrangement in which a child is placed with relatives who assume long-term caregiving responsibilities without fully adopting the child.
What is guardianship?
A team-based planning model that includes family, natural supports, and professionals to create a unified care plan.
What is Wraparound?
This term describes the ability to overcome adversity through protective factors such as supportive adults and community connections.
What is resilience?
The ethical obligation to include clients in decisions that affect their lives.
What is self-determination?
This principle emphasizes that children should remain with their families whenever safely possible.
What is the least restrictive / family-first placement principle?
This type of foster care connects youth with relatives or adults they already know, supporting continuity of identity and culture.
What is kinship care?
A formal meeting where families discuss safety goals, support networks, and action plans, often used as an alternative to court action.
What is a family group conference / family team meeting?
A trauma-informed response that avoids asking “What’s wrong with you?” and instead seeks this perspective.
What is “What happened to you?”?
This federal office monitors state performance and enforces child welfare laws, including providing guidance and technical assistance.
What is the Children’s Bureau?