Building Bridges Initiative: Residential and Child Welfare Partnerships towards Ensuring Permanent Connections

In this webinar for Texas residential stakeholders and their community counterparts, a brief overview of BBI provides information regarding why state agency and residential leaders across the country are transforming practices, inclusive of the use of permanency practices, to align with the research on improving sustained positive outcomes for youth and families post-residential discharge. The Plummer Home, in Salem, Massachusetts, has had a major focus on permanency practices for several years and been recognized nationally for this work. Their executive director and director of permanency practices shares their journey, challenges encountered, and strategies that have been helpful in making permanency one of their primary residential practices; they also provide information about fiscal strategies used to support their focus on permanency. These leaders and a child welfare partner from Massachusetts share strategies used to collaborate together on both the state agency and local child welfare staff levels to support successful permanency practices.