Digital Dialogues and Webinars
Our Digital Dialogues provide an opportunity for participants to engage directly with one or more experts in key topics in the field. Each 45-minute discussion is accompanied by additional resources for exploring the issue more fully.
Recent Digital Dialogues

Young Mamas in Foster Care: Setting the Stage for Success
All teen parents need support in becoming a parent while successfully navigating their own journey into adulthood, but young parents in foster care face a unique set of circumstances. Join us for a discussion with young mamas from National Crittenton's IMPACT (Invincible Mamas Pushing Action & Change Together) network on the needs of young parents in foster care and how we can better support them. (1:01:06)

Birth Parent Foster Caregiver Partnerships: Taking a Family Systems Perspective
Family systems theory gives us a framework for understanding, supporting, or engaging in birth parent foster parent partnerships while acknowledging the complexity and the relational work they require. This digital dialogue will walk us through applying a family systems lens and managing our role in these relationships. (48:53)

Missing From Care: Preventing and Responding to Sex Trafficking of Youth
According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 1 in 6 of the children reported missing who had run away were likely child sex trafficking victims. This startling figure demonstrates the safety risks and vulnerability facing children who are leaving home or foster care placements. Learn more about how we can work together to locate missing children, and how a trauma-informed and youth-centered recovery plan has the power to impact running behavior. (51:48)
Recorded Digital Dialogues and Webinars

Child Abuse Prevention
- NCAPM 2022 Webinar: Healthy Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood: A Cornerstone of Primary Prevention
Julie Fliss (Children’s Bureau, ACF ), Bernadine Futrell (Office of Head Start, ACF), Walter Gilliam (Yale’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy), Katie Hamm (Office of Early Childhood Development, ACF), Lettie Hicks (Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI)), Melanie Martin (Maryland Family Network), Debbie Mays (Bright Beginnings Preschool), Aysha E. Schomburg (Children’s Bureau, ACF), Elaine Voces Stedt (Children’s Bureau, ACF)
» This webinar reinforced the Administration’s commitment to fostering healthy well-being during the critical infant, toddler, and pre-school years as a proactive, prevention approach that promotes positive long-term outcomes for children and their caregivers.
- Planning for Prevention Month: Mobilizing Support for Families During Challenging Times
Cynthia Peterson (Child Welfare Information Gateway ), Jeremy Long (Child Welfare Information Gateway), Caroline Lalonde-Hanna (Child Welfare Information Gateway), Nilofer Ahsan (Children’s Bureau Learning and Coordination Center)
» This presentation discussed how it is more important than ever to use National Child Abuse Prevention Month (NCAPM) to mobilize communities to wrap around and support families.
- Family and Child Well-being System: Economic & Concrete Supports as a Core Component
Clare Anderson (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago), Yasmin Grewal-Kök (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago)
» This presentation examined the well-established link between economic hardship and child welfare involvement—especially neglect.
- Race Equity Within Our Prevention Work
Aysha E. Schomburg (Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau), Elaine Voces Stedt (Director of the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN)), Charlyn Harper Browne (Senior Associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP)), Alexandra James (Chief Executive Officer at Be Strong Families), Laura Alfani (Strengthening Families Administrator at the State of Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families), Erinn Havig (Primary & Community Prevention Lead at the State of Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families)
» Practitioners at the national, state, and local level discuss how we can concretely bring a race equity lens to our prevention work.
- Asking for Help is a Sign of Strength: Changing Social Norms About Help Seeking
Valerie Spiva Collins (FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention ), Valerie Lebanion (Community Collaboration for Children, Kentucky), Sasha Rasco (Texas Department of Family and Protective Services)
» Discover how encouraging families to seek help can be centered as a child maltreatment prevention strategy.
- An Innovative Prevention Planning Framework: Blending Multiple Strategies Together to Achieve Collective Impact
Deb Daro (Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago)
» A discussion about a novel, practical approach to state prevention planning, and how this framework can help community-level prevention planning.
- A Structured Approach to State Prevention Planning: Colorado and South Carolina’s Experience
Kendra Dunn (Colorado Department of Human Services), Sue Williams (Children’s Trust of South Carolina)
» Learn about a new approach to state prevention planning and the experience in two pilot states—Colorado and South Carolina.
- Making it Add Up: Using a Common Framework to Aggregate Impact Across Prevention Programs
Sallye Longshore (Alabama Department of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention), Francesca Adler-Baeder (Auburn University)
» This dialogue highlights the experiences of a successful State Agency-University-Community partnership focused on documenting and evaluating 140+ diverse, community-based child abuse and neglect prevention programs across Alabama.
- Our Tomorrows: Using Story Mapping to Inform Child Abuse and Neglect Planning Efforts
Jacqueline Counts (Center for Public Partnerships & Research at the University of Kansas), Amy Smith (Center for Public Partnerships & Research at the University of Kansas)
» Learn how the University of Kansas is using story mapping software to understand the needs of children and families and inform child maltreatment prevention planning efforts.
- Using Surveys and Focus Groups to Guide Prevention Planning
Jennifer Bellamy (University of Denver)
» Learn more about how surveys and focus groups were used to inform prevention planning efforts in Colorado and South Carolina.

Engaging Communities
- Engaging Parents Around Newly Approved Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccines and Building Vaccine Confidence
Achal Bhatt (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Richard Quartarone ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
» The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 6 months and older. Parents have lots of questions and child and family serving programs and staff have a unique opportunity to share information and engage parents around this new opportunity to save lives, prevent hospitalizations, and keep children safe. Hear more about the why and how of vaccinating children against COVID-19 and learn about new tools and resources that will help you engage parents in this important conversation.
- There’s no Place like Home: Youth Acceptance Project
Vida Khavar, LMFT (Family Builders)
» The Youth Acceptance Project uses a trauma-informed psycho-educational model to address the misinformation, resistance, fear, and grief with which families often struggle, reducing the time that children spend in foster care, reuniting children with their families and, in many cases, preventing separation in the first place.
- Family Matters: Providing Support to Kinship Care Providers
Richard Howard (District of Columbia Child & Family Services Agency), Jenira Hill (New Jersey Department of Children and Families), Dawn DeLuca (New Jersey Department of Children and Families)
» Learn from the work New Jersey and DC are doing to create a support system for their informal kinship care providers.
- Building Birth and Foster Parent Relationships to Promote Reunification
Katie Biron (Family Connections Program), Shrounda Selivanoff (Children’s Home Society of Washington)
» Hear from two representatives of the Birth and Foster Parent Partnership (BFPP) as they share their experiences in building and supporting meaningful partnerships.
- Building Healthy Communities to Promote Child and Family Well-Being
Meryl Levine and Teresa Rafael (National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds)
» Learn about some common assumptions around neglect, and the intersection of poverty and neglect.
- Engaging Business and Other Partners in Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Approaches
Melissa T. Merrick (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
» Learn the importance of partnering with the business community in cross-sector networks for preventing early adversity.
- Getting to the Problem Behind the Symptom: A Unique Primary Prevention Collaboration Between Child Welfare and Education
Corina Pannell (Centerstone), Summer Giron (Centerstone), Grace Harrison (Centerstone)
» Learn more about how child welfare and education departments in Kentucky are collaborating to prevent child abuse and neglect by focusing on chronic truancy, a shared indicator of families in need of extra support.
- Meaningful Parent Partnerships and What They Can Do for You
Meryl Levine (National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds), Kara Georgi (Alliance National Parent Partnership Council), Michael Huesca (Birth Parent National Network)
» Learn how staff can build and sustain authentic relationships with parents as partners in helping to transform systems to strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect.
- New Jersey’s Neighborhood Gathering Place
Antonio Lopez (New Jersey Department of Family Services), Charmaine Thomas ( New Jersey Department of Family Services)
» Learn about New Jersey’s experience with Family Success Centers and its implications for family support programs and strategies.

Families Impacted by Incarceration
- Families Impacted by Incarceration: A Dialogue on Practice Skills
Ann Adalist-Estrin (National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated)
» A national perspective on current and emerging best practices for responding to the needs of children and families impacted by the criminal justice system.
- Families Impacted by Incarceration: Understanding the Issues
Ann Adalist-Estrin (National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated)
» This presentation connects research on brain development, trauma, toxic stress, attachment, and resilience theories to the experiences of children and families of the incarcerated.
- Promoting Family Resilience in the Face of Parental Incarceration
Dr. Crystallee Crain (San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership)
» Learn more about how parental incarceration affects children, and how to support them.

Fatherhood
- Dads Rock! Nurturing Father Engagement
Suzin Bartley and Haji Shearer (Children’s Trust of Massachusetts), Mike Caban (Home Visitor and Healthy Families Program Graduate)
» What are some challenges agencies face when they try to engage fathers? Hear about the Fatherhood Initiative featured in the film Dads Rock.
- Real Talk: Responding to Challenging Issues in Father Engagement
Corey Best (Consultant), Christopher Brown (National Fatherhood Initiative), Destini Goodwin (Fathers’ Support Center, St. Louis), Johnny Rice (Coppin State University), Cheri Tillis (Fathers’ Support Center, St. Louis)
» This Digital Dialogue brought together fatherhood practitioners from around the country to discuss some of the bigger challenges when trying to effectively engage fathers.
- The X-Y Factor: Engaging Dads Using the Protective Factors
Christopher A. Brown (National Fatherhood Initiative)
» Learn how to encourage dads to build protective factors—and what’s unique about working with dads.

Resilience and Well-being
- NEWYoung Mamas in Foster Care: Setting the Stage for Success
» All teen parents need support in becoming a parent while successfully navigating their own journey into adulthood, but young parents in foster care face a unique set of circumstances. Join us for a discussion with young mamas from National Crittenton's IMPACT (Invincible Mamas Pushing Action & Change Together) network on the needs of young parents in foster care and how we can better support them.
- NEWBirth Parent Foster Caregiver Partnerships: Taking a Family Systems Perspective
Elayne Chou (Counseling Psychologist)
» Family systems theory gives us a framework for understanding, supporting, or engaging in birth parent foster parent partnerships while acknowledging the complexity and the relational work they require.
- Laying the Groundwork: Paid Family Leave as a Prevention and Promotion Strategy
Laura Weeldreyer (Maryland Family Network)
» New data shows that policies to provide universal concrete and economic supports to families can have a powerful impact on child abuse and neglect prevention and broader family well-being. This Digital Dialogue covered one such strategy—paid family and medical leave. It explored what research tells us about the impacts of these concrete supports and provided information about one state’s journey to a statewide policy.
- Promoting Healthy Behaviors for Kinship Caregivers
Kerry Littlewood, PhD, MSW (University of South Florida)
» Kinship caregivers often prioritize their children’s needs before caring for their own, often delaying their own medical appointments and medication to purchase shoes for children, transportation, and food. Learn more about kinship caregiver health and an approach to working with kinship caregivers that emphasizes self-compassion and self-care. Created by a multi-disciplinary team of doctors and social workers, the Time for Me Toolkit helps peer navigators to support and provide psychoeducation to caregivers around six pillars of health management (Healthy Eating, Being Active, Healthy Sleep, Healthy Coping, Medical Adherence, and Self-Monitoring).
- Caring for Kinship Caregivers
Ana Beltran (Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network), John Cheney Egan ( Office of Cash Assistance, Illinois Department of Family Services and the Extended Family Support Program), Liliana Hernandez (Children’s Bureau)
» In 2018, 2.7 million children were being raised in a kinship care family without a parent present – either with grandparents, aunts/uncles, siblings, or close family friends. While kinship caregivers provide essential support to children, many frequently need support to carry out this added responsibility effectively.
- Addressing the Systemic Inequities that Stand in the Way of Children’s Well-Being
Iheoma U. Iruka (Equity Research Action Coalition at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute)
» Poverty, race, culture, or zip code should not predetermine a child’s school and life success. This digital dialogue explored the historical roots and current practices and policies that may lead to racial disparities (e.g., conflation of effects of poverty and neglect/abuse) within early childhood and child welfare.
- All Children—All Families: Improving Practice For and With LGBTQ+ Youth and Families
Ellen Kahn (Human Rights Campaign Foundation)
» The Human Rights Campaign is working with hundreds of child welfare systems across the nation to build new and inclusive practices for LGBTQ+ youth and families. Learn more about the effective innovations being put into practice and tools you can use to shift practice in your own program and system.
- Are the Words “Toxic Stress” Toxic? Re-thinking the Narrative About Early Life Stress
Cailin O’Connor (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
» In our concern about adversity, are we selling short the capacity of individuals and communities to heal and grow?
- Putting Wellbeing at the Center of our Work: A Dialogue with the Full Frame Initiative
Athisha King (Full Frame Initiative)
» Learn more about the work of the Full Frame Initiative, the five domains of well-being, and how a well-being frame can shift our service approaches.
- Resilience: Building Community Awareness through Film Screenings
Zach Hiner (Prevent Child Abuse America), Trevor Storrs (Alaska Chidren’s Trust)
» Find out how Prevent Child Abuse America chapters and other community organizations across the country have used the film Resilience to engage communities in child abuse and neglect prevention.
- What the Science Tells Us About Resilience
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D.Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University)
» New science is changing how we think about early childhood adversity and resilience – and how early experiences affect lifelong health and development.

Trauma and Healing
- NEWMissing From Care: Preventing and Responding to Sex Trafficking of Youth
Melissa Snow (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC))
» According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 1 in 6 of the children reported missing who had run away were likely child sex trafficking victims. This startling figure demonstrates the safety risks and vulnerability facing children who are leaving home or foster care placements. Learn more about how we can work together to locate missing children, and how a trauma-informed and youth-centered recovery plan has the power to impact running behavior.
- Supporting Children and Youth Dealing with the Loss of a Parent or Caregiver
Irwin Sandler, PhD (REACH Institute and Arizona State University), Deborah Langosch, PhD (GrandFamilies Outcome Workgroup (GrOW))
» The loss of a parent or caregiver can have cascading impacts on child well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the impact on these losses because of the more than 250,000 children who are estimated to have lost a caregiver due to the pandemic. Dealing with loss and adequately supporting a grieving child are issues that predate the pandemic and include children who have lost caregivers to the termination of parental rights, incarceration, and other issues. Come learn more about how to work with caregivers so they can best support a grieving child.
- Protective Factors for Domestic Violence Survivors: A Pathway to More Opportunities
Tien Ung (Futures Without Violence), Charlyn Harper Browne (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
» Learn about five research-based protective factors that illustrate opportunities for prevention and early intervention with families impacted by co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment.
- Partnering to Address Childhood ACES
Lori Clarke (Social Policy Institute, San Diego State University), Pradeep Gidwani (American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3)
» Learn about ACES Aware, the California partnership between medical and community-based providers and the prevention sector.
- Balancing ACEs with HOPE
Robert Sege (Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts University)
» ACEs are not the only important childhood experiences that have lifelong health consequences. This Digital Dialogue introduces the concept of HOPE: Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences.
- Are the Words “Toxic Stress” Toxic? Re-thinking the Narrative About Early Life Stress
Cailin O’Connor (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
» In our concern about adversity, are we selling short the capacity of individuals and communities to heal and grow?
- Community Approaches to Toxic Stress
Cailin O’Connor (Center for the Study of Social Policy)
» In our concern about adversity, are we selling short the capacity of individuals and communities to heal and grow?
- Hatred, Hope and Healing: Personal Reflections from an Adult Who Witnessed Domestic Violence as a Child
Dr. Johnny Rice (Coppin State University)
» Learn about a family-centered approach to responding to domestic violence that engages and supports survivors, children, and perpetrators.
- Helping Young Children Who Have Experienced Trauma
Jessica Dym Bartlett (Child Trends)
» Learn about the ways that trauma can affect the youngest children, and how programs and practitioners can support them.
- Parental Depression and Its Impact on Child and Family Well-being
Jessica Dym Bartlett (Child Trends)
» Learn what new research is telling us about how to intervene effectively in support of depressed parents and their children.
- Understanding and Responding Proactively to Polyvictimization
Natalia Aguirre (National Director of the Family Justice Center Alliance, Alliance for HOPE International), Stacy Phillips (Program Manager, Office for Victims of Crime)
» Learn how new research is helping us to better understand polyvictimization, its impacts, and how to interrupt the patterns and help support healing.
- What the Science Tells Us About Resilience
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University)
» New science is changing how we think about early childhood adversity and resilience – and how early experiences affect lifelong health and development.

Workforce Support
- Preventing and Healing from Secondary Traumatic Stress: Taking an Organizational Approach
Aurora Smaldone (Maine Behavioral Healthcare), Dory Hacker (Maine Behavioral Healthcare), Rebecca Hoffman Frances (Maine Behavioral Healthcare)
» Maine Behavioral Healthcare is working with child and family-serving organizations across the state of Maine, implementing practices and protocols for workers experiencing secondary traumatic stress.
- Integrating Mindful Awareness Strategies to Support Well-Being and Resiliency in the Child Welfare Workforce
Jenifer Goldman Fraser (Zero to Three), Maria Gehl (Zero to Three)
» Learn about a range of mindful practices and how to develop a plan for integrating mindfulness into your daily work and home routines.
- Supporting Child Welfare Staff: The Critical First 3 Months
Alan O’Malley-Laursen (Olmsted County Child and Family Services, Rochester, MN), Cambria Rose Walsh (Chadwick Center for Children and Families at Rady Children’s Hospital)
» This Digital Dialogue details organizational strategies for orienting new staff to a trauma-exposed work environment and supporting them during those critical first 3 months.
- Workforce Well-being—Centering Yourself to Better Support Others
Amelia Franck Meyer (Alia Innovations)
» Dr. Amelia Franck Meyer presents practical tips and tools for us to integrate well-being into our lives, our work, and our organizations to allow us to support those we serve in sustainable ways.