National Webinar: April 12, 2017
Learning Exchange: April 19, 2017

Vicarious trauma, burnout, and lack of self-care can challenge all first responders, including child welfare professionals. First responders who care for others often need peer counseling, crisis support and other resilience-building services to normalize issues and promote retention. These activities are best provided by those with shared lived experiences that traditional mental health or employee assistance programs are not set up to deliver. To meet this need, the NJ Department of Children and Families implemented the Worker2Worker (W2W) program, a confidential peer-counseling helpline and support approach for employees in the Department’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P) to help manage the unique stressors of frontline child welfare practice:

Coordinated by Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care and staffed by former child welfare supervisors and caseworkers, W2W provides a 7-day-a-week helpline reflective of a nationally recognized best practice model of peer support, Reciprocal Peer Support. The program offers clinical care telephone assessments, a network of referral/treatment services, and psychological first aid with crisis response services following traumatic events. In addition, the program has expanded to provide peer mentoring with training and monthly follow-up with an assigned peer mentor for all new child welfare staff, as well as regular resilience-building educational and peer support events, such as Taming Trauma.

W2W has successfully delivered and expanded its approach to reach more than 11,000 contacts over the last three years, with marked success. Presenters will highlight how the program’s components have been operationalized, as well as relevant tips, tools and lessons learned to help others develop and sustain similar trauma-reducing and resilience-building initiatives in child welfare and human service agencies and systems. 

Presenters include: Nancy Carré-Lee, Deputy Director of Central Operations, NJ DCF and Cherie Castellano, W2W Program Director, Rutgers UBHC. For more information, please explore our Presenter Bios.

Recordings:

• Webinar Recording (video)
• Learning Exchange Recording (video)
• Webinar MP3 (audio only)
• Learning Exchange MP3 (audio only)

Handouts and Resources: 

• PowerPoint Slides
• VIDEO: Worker2Worker Overview
• ARTICLE: Reciprocal Peer Support: A Decade of Not So Random Acts of Kindness
• 2016 New Jersey Workforce Report 

NCWWI co-hosted this 6-part webinar series with the Center for the Study of Social Policy. This series features workforce and organizational development stories and strategies to achieve racial equity. 

1. Using an Institutional Analysis to Identify Core Issues and Spur Change - July 2017
2. Community Collaboration & Grassroots Effort (Cross-systems & Tribal Partnerships) - September 2017
3. A Data-Driven Approach to Improving Outcomes for Black Girls in Child Welfare - December 2017
4. Slow and Steady Wins the RACE of Child Welfare Equity - February 2018
5. Strengthening Our Efforts Through Partnerships with Academia - June 2018
6. Sustaining Racial Equity Improvements in Child Welfare - September 26, 2018

Tools of the Trade 2018 is a five-part series of interactive and informational webinars! Our team will help you explore NCWWI resources and efficiently locate just the right ones to make positive changes in your teams or organizations. NCWWI staff will host a new 45-minute session each month. Each of these 45-minute sessions will help participants use or apply one of the following sets of NCWWI tools: (1) eResources on MyNCWWI (2) NCWWI Online Learning Opportunities, including microlearnings (3) Workforce Development Planning & Assessment Tool Kit (4) Leadership Activities for Staff at all levels (5) Leadership Training for Supervisors and Middle Managers. Visit the Tools of the Trade series web page for session recordings and handouts 

Running from 2014-2017, this 10-part webinar series showcases child welfare issues, and a range of workforce development strategies that can be used to address and ameliorate them. The series launched with an overview of the NCWWI Workforce Development Framework (WDF) and its application for the field. Subsequent sessions feature agency and university leaders sharing different gap-closing workforce development strategies related to the 10 WDF components as described in the 2014 to 2019 version of the WDF.

1. Introducing the Workforce Development Framework
2. Simulation Labs for Child Welfare Education and Training
3. Children's Corps: A Dynamic Approach to Child Welfare Worker Recruitment, Screening and Selection
4. Child Welfare Training Competencies in Action: The Ohio Experience
5. Transforming Child Welfare Decision-making through Modern Technology & Data Analytics
6. Becoming a Trauma-informed Child Welfare Agency: The Waupaca County Journey
7. Real World Barriers & Strategies for Evidence-based Practice Implementation
8. Prioritizing Supervision: Comprehensive Supervisory Development in Indiana
9. Achieving Racial Equity through Workforce & Organizational Change
10. Peer Mentoring, Crisis Response & Resilience-building: NJ DCF’s Worker2Worker Program 

1. Evaluation Findings, Strategies and Lessons Learned
2. Traineeships Legacies and Lessons Learned
3. Child Welfare Means Change Management: Stories and Lessons Learned from LAMM Alumni
4. Leadership Academy for Supervisors: What We Learned and How We Changed 

1. ChildStat: Leading Systems-level Improvements based on Case-level Experiences
2. Competency-based Recruitment, Screening & Selection: Strengthening Workforce Capacity, Retention & Organizational Resiliency
3. Improving Supervision by Collaboration, Transparency & Accountability: The Impact of Missouri's Supervision Advisory Committee
4. New Jersey Fellows: Building Capacity in "Managing by Data" to Improve Leadership, Frontline Practice & Case Outcomes
5. Coaching to Support Solution-based Casework in Child Welfare
6. Design Teams & Learning Circles: Agency- & Unit-level Interventions for Improving Organizational Climate & Culture
7. Casework Teaming to Manage Workload, Enhance Effectiveness and Boost Morale
8. BONUS SESSION #1: Learning & Living the NCWWI Leadership Model
9. BONUS SESSION #2: Evidence-based Practices in Child Welfare: Opportunities & Challenges for the Workforce
10. Building a Culturally Responsive Workforce: The Texas Model for Undoing  Disproportionality & Disparities in Child Welfare
11. Child Welfare Staff Engagement & Retention in Washington DC: Alternative Work Schedules, Telecommuting & Other Supports
12. Beyond Professional Education & Training: PA's Dynamic University-Agency Partnership for Transfer of Learning, Quality Improvement & Organizational Effectiveness