Improving Your Results in Kin-Finding and Placement

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View the Kin-Finding Toolkit

The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network hosted a webinar on September 12, 2023 with presenter and Network Subject Matter Expert Marina Nitze for a preview and initial roll-out of the Kin-Finding Toolkit, featuring promising practices that have been helping child welfare agencies across the country increase their kin placement rates. Please listen to the webinar recording to learn more!

Every practice comes with the necessary real-world tools, such as sample policy language and forms. Take away new strategies and resources to adapt for your own system or organization. The 20+ practices include:

• Using an expansive definition of kin
• Using heart maps
• Making plans to keep youth connected to all their supportive adults
• Asking kin you find for more kin
• Requiring higher-level approval for non-kin placements

View the webinar recording above to learn more about opportunities to receive implementation support, and to share your own kin-finding innovations.

Our presenter:

Marina Nitze is a Subject Matter Expert (SME) of the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network. She is a fellow at New America’s New Practice Lab, where she works on improving America’s foster care system through her 20-state Resource Family Working Group and the Child Welfare Playbook. Marina was most recently the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, after serving as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education. She serves on the advisory boards of Foster America and Think of Us; created TaskTackler, the personal productivity app for Type-A personalities; and authored the new book Hack Your Bureaucracy. Marina lives in Seattle, WA. 

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