Continuing Education
Resources

This presentation about the history, purpose, and application of the Indian Child Welfare Act for CASA Volunteers in Kansas was recorded in February, 2025. Hosted by the Kansas CASA Association, presenters include Vivien Olsen from KS DCF, Christopher Halbert JD, and Sheena Halverstadt from NCKS CASA.

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You can find the presentation slides at https://drive.google.com/file/d/11pVeTtcc3SgIg3X1PcYhCloWwS6XbdP2/view.

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

From the moment he was born, Andrew Bridge and his mother Hope shared a love so deep that it felt like nothing else mattered. Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother's arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down around him. He was only seven years old. Hope was institutionalized, and Andrew was placed in what would be his devastating reality for the next eleven years--foster care. After surviving one of our country's most notorious children's facilities, Andrew was thrust into a savagely loveless foster family that refused to accept him as one of their own. Deprived of the nurturing he needed, Andrew clung to academics and the kindness of teachers. All the while, he refused to surrender the love he held for his mother in his heart. Ultimately, Andrew earned a scholarship to Wesleyan, went on to Harvard Law School, and became a Fulbright Scholar. Andrew has dedicated his life's work to helping children living in poverty and in the foster care system. He defied the staggering odds set against him, and here in this heart-wrenching, brutally honest, and inspirational memoir, he reveals who Hope's boy really is.

The Child Catcher chronicles the author's role in the longest-running, most bitterly fought mental health lawsuit in American history. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bridge joined the small team of civil rights lawyers representing the children of the Eufaula Adolescent Center, a violent and secretive institution in the rural South, against the State of Alabama.

Poverty intersects with other social determinants, such as racism and classism, creating structural vulnerabilities and evidence indicates impoverished children are disproportionality affected by maltreatment. Poverty, especially when combined with factors like parental depression, substance use, and social isolation, significantly increases the risk of child maltreatment. The presentation will discuss how these low-resource conditions contribute to disparities and why children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, race, and ethnicity face closer scrutiny and affect child maltreatment reports.

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The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) Active Efforts Support Toolkit (IAST) was developed by the National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare (NCSACW) with the aim of helping child welfare workers, substance use treatment staff, court personnel, attorneys, and healthcare professionals support American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/AN) families specifically affected by substance use and increase their understanding of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). This toolkit includes the IAST Guidance Document, IAST Tool, and IAST Learning Modules. The NCSACW hopes this toolkit offers guidance and learning opportunities to promote the enhancements and innovations necessary to improve outcomes for AI/AN families affected by substance use.

An unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. This narrative highlights the intricacies of growing up in the system—the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents, and the terrifying push out of foster care and into adulthood.  A copy is also available at the CASA office.

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In partnership with Convene Training, LLC the Kansas CASA Association hosted a Situational Awareness Safety training on June 26, 2024. This training was recorded and on-demand access is available for the training until December 31, 2024.

Program volunteers including advocates and board members may participate in this on-demand training for FREE! The training is worth 1.25 hours of CEU.

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An excellent new article in the Wall Street Journal by Rachel Wolfe has drawn new attention to the struggles of boys and young men in the U.S. As Wolfe notes, in homes across America, a troubling trend is emerging. While data for young women are gradually improving, many of their male counterparts are struggling to find their footing. This disparity is reshaping the landscape of American youth and raising concerns about the future of an entire generation. It also has implications for mentoring programs.

When Will Ferrell's good friend Harper comes out as a trans woman, they take a road trip to bond and reintroduce Harper to the country as her true self.

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Link to the full article can be found here.

Published by the City University of New York Law Review, this article explores CASA and systemic racism.

You can find a summary of the article here.

The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) in conjunction with their adoption advocacy partner, The Jockey Being Family Foundation, offers 600 FREE registrations to each Strengthening Your Family (SYF) Webinar with 10 webinars offered each year. These webinars focus on a variety of relevant topics for adoptive, foster and kinship parents as well as the professionals who serve them.

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When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely proud people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.

From the streets of Baltimore to the halls of the New Mexico Philharmonic, a musician shares his remarkable story in I'm Possible, an inspiring memoir of perseverance and possibility. Growing up, Richard Antoine White and his mother didn't have a key to a room or a house. Sometimes they had shelter, but they never had a place to call home. Still, they always had each other, and from a young age, Richard believed he could look after his mother, even as she struggled with alcoholism and would frequently disappear, sending Richard into loops of visiting familiar spots until he found her again. And he always did--until one night, when he almost dies searching for her in the snow, and is taken in by his adoptive grandparents.

Mad Honey tells the story of two women who have fled abusive pasts to make a new life in the small town of Adams, New Hampshire. When one is found dead, and the other finds her son accused of the murder, the tense courtroom drama that unfolds shines light on the true cost of secrets kept for love.

A pioneering researcher and one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for healing Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers frequently pass on their stress to their partners and children.

The CASA office also has a copy available for lending.

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The story of Juneteenth highlights how hope has endured from 1865 to today. In doing so, it paints an important picture of freedom and the redemptive suffering for the discouraged and hopeful, Black and White, skeptics and saints, and all of us.

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Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes the world has ever known — a legend in the NFL, MLB, NCAA, and in the Olympics. Today he is being celebrated by a new generation of Native Americans.

Each year, more than 250,000 children in America are removed from their families by judicial means—and more than 3.5 million children are investigated by child welfare agencies. Most of these children are Black, Indigenous, queer, disabled, and otherwise marginalized. And much of the tens of billions of dollars allotted each year to so-called “child welfare” is spent on separating families. This week’s guest Dorothy Roberts joins Jonathan to discuss how this system operates; who it most harms; and what it has to do with mass incarceration, police brutality, and centuries’ worth of inequities in this country.

Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a contributor to the 1619 Project book and the author of four books, including the best-selling Killing the Black Body. Her path breaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent social justice issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics.  She has been featured in countless media outlets including The New York Times, New York Magazine, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Vice News, CNN, ABC, and many others. She lives in Philadelphia.

CW: This episode discusses police violence, bodily harm, and hateful rhetoric.

Provided by Texas CASA, this continuing education podcast connects CASA volunteers with engaging and relevant training designed to help strengthen advocacy for children and families. Each short, dynamic episode features informative discussions with subject matter experts exploring topics connected to child welfare and best practices for CASA advocacy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker(s) in their personal capacity and are not the official policy or position of Texas (or Douglas County) CASA.

From "Psychotherapy Networker", two trauma experts weigh in on connection, community and the tyranny of diagnosis.

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Building Hope for Family Healing and Recovery - National Center for Substance Abuse and Child Welfare

This webinar introduced the National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare’s (NCSACW) new publication, Building Hope for Families Affected by Substance Use and Mental Health Disorders: A Blueprint for an Effective System of Care to Promote Lasting Recovery and Family Well-Being. The webinar highlighted concrete strategies collaboratives can use to improve outcomes for families affected by substance use and mental health disorders. Participants learned about: 1) lessons and strategies sites use to implement the pillars of an effective system of care while promoting hope and recovery for families, 2) Children and Family Future’s (CFF) 10 Essential Pillars of an Effective System of Care—and corresponding strategies for practitioners and policymakers, and 3) Regional Partnership Grants (RPG) and in-depth technical assistance (IDTA) initiatives.

Meeting with the school to plan your child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) can be intimidating. This is true for any parent or guardian. But you may feel an extra layer of unease if you’re the only Black or brown person in the room.

Listen to this episode of The Opportunity Gap to get IEP meeting tips for parents of kids of color. Learn from Taína Coleman, a mom of two and an education specialist at the Child Mind Institute. See how she uses her experience in special education to explain:

• Which documents you have the right to see before the meeting
• How to ask if the IEP’s annual goals are aiming high enough
• What to do if you don’t feel ready to sign the IEP

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The Citizen Review Board and Douglas County CASA submitted questions for Judge Paul Klepper and panel attorney Danielle Packer to weigh in on.

National CASA has shared all their archived webinars from 2023. Find the list here, with links to connect you to the webinars.

Learn about the history of mandatory reporting and whether or not it helps reduce child abuse and neglect.

A discussion with Bessel van der Kolk, MD and Peter A. Levine, PhD about the concepts included in van der Kolk's book "The Body Keeps the Score."

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Mindspring provides free mental health education opportunities to the public through webinars on a wide variety of mental health topics. All webinars are free and open to the public. Webinars are recorded and emailed to all registrants. Certificates of attendance are administered to anyone who participates in the live webinar and completes the survey at the end.

The Institute of Child Psychology was founded to educate parents and professionals on issues pertaining to children’s mental health, and to promote the psychological and emotional well-being of children and adolescents. You'll find the most current, relevant, evidence-based, and neurobiologically informed practices featured in their various webinars.

Although assigned male at birth, Jazz is a transgender female and has been living as a girl since kindergarten. Jazz's family has stood side-by-side with her as she's battled discrimination, hate speech, online bullying and more.

Our own Margie Carr wrote Kansas City’s Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home, the extraordinary, century-old history of one city block whose residents shaped the changing status of Black people in Kansas City and built the social and economic institutions that supported the city’s Black community during the first half of the twentieth century. The CASA office also has a copy available for lending.

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A Place Called Home is both David's powerful personal account through the lens of a child surviving it daily. And as the go-to child welfare advocate for the Obama administration and major U.S. companies, A Place Called Home is a beckoning call to our national conscience to move from pity to action.

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Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, and unexpected friendship. Copies also available in the CASA office.

When Ree Dollys father skips bail, the 16-year-old knows if he doesn't show up, her family will lose their home. Her goal had been to leave her life of poverty and join the Army, but first she must find her father, teach her little brothers to fend for themselves, and escape a downward spiral of misery. Copies also available in the CASA office.

Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family. Copies also available in the CASA office.

Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.

The original book is also available at Lawrence Public Library: https://lawrence.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S119C328750

An inspiring true story of the tumultuous nine years Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent in the foster care system, and how she triumphed over painful memories and real-life horrors to ultimately find her own voice. Copies also available in the CASA office.

The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a solo walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay. Also available from Lawrence Public Library via Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/11475900?vp=lawrencepl

KCSL offers regular trainings, so we have linked their site in order for you to peruse what's upcoming. Bookmark this page if you're interested in the topics you see! 

Opeeka believes the goal of using technology is to make life easier, more productive as well as increasing health & wellness. Opeeka’s mission is to keep the person in the center of care, which helps assist with equity and have an impact of the Social Determinants of Health. An important pillar of their work is to increase collaborations among systems. These podcasts can serve as a conduit for sharing knowledge, innovations and strengthening collaborative efforts worldwide.

Not all podcast episodes will be applicable to CASA work, but there are a number of useful conversations exploring the child welfare system.

Through telling their stories and by hearing from professionals in the field, the film explains how children enter the foster care system, what happens while they are there, and especially what it's like as they transition out of it. Many of the hardships these youth face come to light as they allow unfettered access into their current situation and provide candid recollection and insight into their past. Along the journey of telling these unbelievable stories, the documentary shows how individuals, organizations, and communities work to improve the lives of these young adults – and how YOU can make a difference!

The Vera Institute of Justice, an independent nonprofit national research and policy organization hired by Justice Matters, recently presented its research findings to the Douglas County Criminal Justice Coordinating Commission.

The Executive Summary can be found here.

Neurobiological systems may be particularly susceptible to deleterious impact of childhood trauma, and the impact of childhood trauma on development and subsequent functional outcomes across the lifespan has been well-documented. The current review addresses the neurobiological impact of exposure to interpersonal trauma in childhood in the context of executive function, emotion regulation, and dissociation/interoceptive awareness. Subsequent risk for PTSD and depression is also discussed. The pathway of risk from childhood trauma to these cognitive, emotional, and psychiatric outcomes is addressed in terms of potential structural and functional alterations within the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and amygdala resulting from chronic or repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and its interaction with and influence on genetic and epigenetic processes during sensitive periods of development. Implications for practice are discussed.

Presented by Dr. David Schonfeld, MD. Supporting Children, Staff, and School at Times of Crisis and Loss. Crisis and loss are common in the lives of students, whether due to a crisis involving a student’s individual family or one that affects the entire school community. This webinar will help school professionals learn basic skills in how to talk with and support individual students or the entire class/school as they struggle to understand and cope with a crisis and loss in their lives.

A  look at why the lives of high school graduate and GED test takers'  lives vary so drastically when their test scores are roughly equal.

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A story about doubt: how it germinated, spread, and eventually took hold of an entire community, with terrible consequences. A collaboration with The Marshall Project and ProPublica. A story from "This American Life" from Feb 26, 2016 and about the story of a girl who was raped and not believed and the subject of the Neflix series "Unbelievable."

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The stories we tell about ourselves — stories of success and stories of failure — often have their beginnings in the distant past. Sometimes, they start in our childhoods. Sometimes, before we were even born.

This idea may sound poetic, but when it comes to economic mobility, there's evidence to back it up. Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, is responsible for some of the most powerful evidence, drawing on data from many millions of Americans.

Raj has found that early variables in your life, from the quality of your kindergarten teacher to the neighborhood you grew up in, can have lasting effects. And those effects often result in dramatically divergent outcomes in different parts of the country.

"People ask... is the American dream alive or not today? And I actually think the question itself is sort of ill-posed," Raj says. "The term 'the American Dream' --really we should think of it as 'the Iowa Dream' or 'the Atlanta Dream' or 'the California Dream' because there's so much variation within this country."

Today we ask some questions that carry big implications: can you put an economic value on a great kindergarten teacher? How is it that two children living just a few blocks from each other can have radically different chances in life? What gives Salt Lake City an edge over Cleveland when it comes to offering people better prospects than their parents? The state of your American Dream, this week on Hidden Brain.

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This memoir, which tells the story of Machado’s abusive relationship with another woman, is an act of personal and formal bravery.

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Snyder highlights an epidemic of unacknowledged violence. Fifty women a month are shot and killed by their partners, and she explores the problem from multiple perspectives: the victims, the aggressors and a society that turns a blind eye.

In her unstinting memoir — a portrait of working-class poverty in America — Land scrapes by on $9 an hour cleaning houses to support herself and her young daughter.

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In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti–Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.

Despite the nature of its title, Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author's own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism.

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In powerful poetry and prose, Saeed Jones recounts his experiences growing up as a young, black, gay man in rural Texas. In powerful poetry and prose, Saeed Jones recounts his experiences growing up as a young, black, gay man in rural Texas.

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Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.

A book-length letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, Samori. In it, Coates explains to Samori what it means to be a black man in America.

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Details how federal housing policies in the 1940s and '50s mandated segregation and undermined the ability of black families to own homes and build wealth.

Whether we are overwhelmed by work or school; our families or communities; caretaking for others or ourselves; or engagement in social justice, environmental advocacy, or civil service, just a few subtle shifts can help sustain us. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, shows us how by offering concrete strategies to help us mitigate harm, cultivate our ability to be decent and equitable, and act with integrity. The Age of Overwhelm aims to help ease our burden of overwhelm, restore our perspective, and give us strength to navigate what is yet to come.

The Kansas City Star has examined what happens to kids who age out of foster care and found that, by nearly every measure, states are failing in their role as parents to America’s most vulnerable children.

Trauma is a widespread, harmful and costly public health problem. It occurs as a result of violence, abuse, neglect, loss, disaster, war and other emotionally harmful experiences. Trauma has no boundaries with regard to age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, geography or sexual orientation. It is an almost universal experience of people with mental and substance use disorders. The purpose of this paper is to develop a working concept of trauma and a trauma-informed approach and to develop a shared understanding of these concepts that would be acceptable and appropriate across an array of service systems and stakeholder groups. SAMHSA puts forth a framework for the behavioral health specialty sectors, that can be adapted to other sectors such as child welfare, education, criminal and juvenile justice, primary health care, the military and other settings that have the potential to ease or exacerbate an individual’s capacity to cope with traumatic experiences … The desired goal is to build a framework that helps systems “talk” to each other, to understand better the connections between trauma and behavioral health issues, and to guide systems to become trauma-informed" (p. 2-3). Sections of this publication include: introduction; purpose and approach—developing a framework for trauma and a trauma-informed approach; background—trauma—where we are and how we got here; SMAHSA's concept of trauma; SAMHSA's trauma-informed approach—key assumptions and principles; guidance for implementing a trauma-informed approach; next steps—trauma in the context of community; and conclusion

How can child welfare agencies, Federal partners, judicial and legal entities, and community organizations shift both the perception and application of foster care to one that supports families? Dr. Jerry Milner explains his support for systemic change across child welfare systems: where foster care is viewed as a last resort for families facing challenges in maintaining safe and stable homes for children and youth.

In this episode, Dr. Milner explains the Federal Government’s role in facilitating community-based collaboration to support families. The conversation also focuses on increasing awareness of the needs of children, youth, and families involved in foster care, along with the value of ensuring foster care is used as a support for families instead of a substitute for parents.

Topics discussed include the following:

 Changing the misconceptions regarding children, youth, and families impacted by foster care

 The importance of Title IV-E Reimbursement for legal services for parents, children, and youth

 How the Federal Government supports community-based prevention efforts

 The issues and trends State and local child welfare agencies are sharing with Dr. Milner

Follows the year in the life of a high school that has radically changed it's approach to disciplining its students, becoming a model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affects families.