Events

2026 Spring Conference
Meeting the Moment: Immigration and Child Welfare

Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, MN
The Carriage Hall

On Wednesday, April 22, the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare hosted its Annual Spring Conference – Meeting the Moment: Immigration and Child Welfare. As immigration policies and practices continue to evolve, child welfare professionals are increasingly called upon to respond to complex legal, emotional, and safety concerns affecting immigrant and mixed-status families. This conference provided an opportunity for shared learning, dialogue, and collaboration to help child welfare professionals better understand the experiences of immigrant children and families, and to strengthen their ability to support them effectively.

Events included a keynote address from Dr. Kristina Lovato, Director of the Center on Immigration and Child Welfare Reform (CICW), entitled "Navigating Care Amid Immigration Enforcement: Child Welfare and Social Service Responses to Vulnerable Children and Families," and also featured grounding sessions from the National Compadres Network. Héctor Sánchez-Flores, Executive Director of the National Compadres Network, closed the conference with his presentation, "Healing to Serve: Rooted in Culture, Driven by Service, and Leading with Compassion."

Agenda

2025 Permanency & Child Welfare Fall Conference
Connecting the Dots, Completing the Circle

October 14-15, 2025

Radisson Blu Mall of America
2100 Killebrew Dr, Bloomington, MN 55425

As we confront the evolving challenges of permanency and child welfare, this dynamic two-day conference will unite child welfare professionals and advocates in a shared mission: to deepen their expertise and sharpen their strategies for addressing the diverse and often competing needs of children, youth, and families. Together, we’ll explore innovative solutions and forge stronger pathways to lasting stability and well-being.

“Connecting the Dots, Completing the Circle” emphasizes the importance of maintaining connections between children and their families while reinforcing the long-term goals of permanency and stability in child welfare. It also demonstrates a focus on strategies and practices that support family unity and lasting positive outcomes for children.

Agendas

Day 1 Agenda

Day 2 Agenda

More agenda details

2025 Spring Conference
Tensions and Trade-offs: Child Welfare and the Evolving Role of Technology

Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, MN

On Tuesday, April 15, the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare hosted its 25th Annual Spring Conference - Child Welfare and the Evolving Role of Technology. Areas of focus for the day included Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality & Simulation, and Technology Platforms. Participants heard about the different opportunities and limitations impacting child welfare today and into the future.

Events included a keynote address from Lauri Goldkind, PhD, editor in chief of the Journal of Technology in Human Services, on AI tools in the child protective services arena. She also led a presentation titled The Future of AI in Child & Family Services: Policy and Practice Considerations. Also, Melanie Sage, PhD, MSW, of Sage Training and Consulting led an engaging session on Social Media: Navigating Opportunities, Risks, and Ethics. There was also a live virtual reality demonstration from the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy.

Presentations:

Dr. Lauri Goldkind - Child Welfare Intelligence? Opportunities & Challenges of AI Tools in the Child Protective Services Arena

Melanie Sage, PhD, MSW - Social Media: Navigating Opportunities, Risks, and Ethics

Agenda

2024 Be@School Conference
From Awareness to Action:
Uniting Efforts to Address the Attendance Crisis

August 1, 2024 – 9:00 to 4:00
McNamara Alumni Center

Agenda

Presentations and more information about the conference

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare is pleased to announce our 24th Annual Spring Child Welfare Conference. On Tuesday, April 23, we will host a half-day conference on COVID-19’s impact on families, the workforce, and the delivery of child welfare services.

Participants will hear from a variety of speakers, as well as each other, as we explore lessons learned related to crisis response, child maltreatment, virtual engagement, family preservation, emerging promising practices and more. We hope to better understand how this collective experience over the past few years has both shaped and informed the current landscape of child welfare work. The conference will be in-person, with an opportunity for groups to stream live.

Agenda

The 2023 Permanency & Child Welfare Fall Conference took place November 14-16, 2023 at the Radisson Blu Mall of America in Bloomington.

This conference brings together professionals and advocates alike to expand perspectives on what permanency means, the “what” and “who”, as well as how modern advances in many areas impact the relationships children and youth have with their family – birth adopted, and/or chosen. In centering the advancement of child/youth wellbeing, we’ll talk through the layers of permanency from reunification, policy and legalities of permanency, and TPR or aspects of parental rights to workforce development, complex needs, and the impact of areas such as sexual health and technology in development of identity and relationships.

Reach out to [email protected] for more information and materials from the conference.

2023 Be@School Conference: Nothing About Us Without Us participants will hear current and former student’s reflections on their experience with the education system and what they need from adults, particularly related to school attendance. We’ll also dig into the results from the 2022 Minnesota Student Survey. A current teacher will reflect on how he uses student input to engage middle school youth. There will be opportunities for discussion and networking with other professionals. A light breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Agenda

Conference Materials

• Recognition of Success: Stories of Achievement video
• Rogers High School PSA Attendance video
• Speaker Student Survey MDE (Maira Rosas) Powerpoint
• MYVoice youth poem
• MYVoice art show
• Be@School Youth video
• Speaker Michael Bratsch Powerpoint
• Highlight REEL video

The 2022 Spring virtual CASCW conference featured speakers and panelists as they explore how child welfare workers can best facilitate and support birth and foster parent relationships to improve outcomes for children and families. The audience learned current strategies and best practices from those with professional and personal experience.

Day 1

Day 2

Resources

Trainings, Videos, Podcasts

Why Relationships Matter - a training course from Amara Family Connections that explains why investing time and energy into relationships is essential to protecting children who have entered the foster care system

A series of four videos from Amara Family Connections discussing how birth parents and caregivers developed support systems with and for each other to coparent for the well-being of system-involved children:

• Yuvia’s Story
• A Network of Family
• The Power of Relationships: Sarah, Josh, and Samantha
• Grayson’s Story 

Seen Out Loud Podcasts by Institute for Family ( Episodes 2 and 4)

Voices from the Field Audio Series by Casey Family Programs “How can birth and foster parents partner to achieve reunification?”

Video about Including Fathers produced by the University of Washington that addresses the barriers that fathers and male family members face when building and maintaining relationships with children.

Caregivers, Families and Substance Use Disorder
Family Connections Program training course to help gain understanding about SUD, what the science tells us about recovery and tips for partnering with parents struggling with SUD.

Video Role of Resource Parents in Supporting Family Recovery and Reunification produced by Children and Family Futures that outlines how Family Treatment Courts are engaging resource parents to better support families affected by parental substance use.

Supporting Family Relationships for Incarcerated Parents-Parenting Inside Out - Parenting Inside Out (PIO) Curriculum developed for criminal justice involved parents that focuses on rebuilding and improving family relationships and parenting skills.

Protecting Relationships During Transitions Training Video - QPI workshop that gives tips on the elements and implementation of effective transition plans for seamless transitions of a child from one caregiver to another.  Examples of tips include how to maintain relationships between child, relatives, and caregivers.

Article from Rise Magazine - Structures of Oppression in the U.S. Child Welfare System: Reflections of Administrative Barriers to Equity. Authors illustrate how systems of oppression in regulating family life that take the form of practices, policies, and laws or regulations contribute to racial disparities, reinforce economic hardships and support policies of family separation.

Organizations and Programs

Quality Parenting Initiative - A strategy of the Youth Law Center that focuses on strengthening foster care and refocusing on excellent parenting for all children in the child welfare system.

More on QPI from Casey Family Programs 

CHERISH Kindering - Program offering services to promote the social and emotional well being of children involved in the child welfare system that are in out-of-home placements. Services are for birth parents, relative caregivers and resource parents.

Children and Family Futures - Provides consulting, technical assistance, strategic planning,  evaluation and training for child welfare, courts and substance use disorder treatment.

Children’s Trust Fund Alliance - National membership organization for state children’s trust funds.  The Children’s Trust Fund Alliance provides support to state children’s trust and prevention funds.

Family Connections Program - A collaboration among parents, caregivers, and child welfare organizations designed to build and support relationships between the people in a child’s life experiencing out-of-home-placement.

Foster Kinship - Nevada based organization that provides evidence informed programs that strengthen kinship caregivers capacity to provide safe, permanent and nurturing homes. Foster Kinship provides kinship caregivers with information, advocacy, case management, and training to help caregivers access legal, financial and support services.

Research and Evaluation

Children and Families Affected by Parental Substance Use Disorders - National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare’s highlighted resource to help reduce the stigma of Substance Use Disorders.

CoParenting and Healthy Relationship and Marriage Education for Dads (CHaRMED) - ChildTrends Federal evaluation effort designed to better understand how Responsible Fatherhood Programs support healthy marriages/relationships and coparenting. This study helped to identify gaps in services, and outline recommendations for addressing gaps.

Structures of Oppression in the U.S. Child Welfare System: Reflections of Administrative Barriers to Equity - Authors illustrate how systems of oppression in regulating family life that take the form of practices, policies, and laws or regulations contribute to racial disparities, reinforce economic hardships and support policies of family separation.

Supporting Successful Reunifications - Child Welfare Information Gateway’s bulletin for professionals providing examples of frameworks and practices that support family reunification.  The bulletin also provides resources for casework frameworks and practices, parent support systems, and legal system involvement.  

2025 Esther Wattenberg Policy Forum

Wednesday, December 3, 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Humber H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Hubert Humphrey Atrium

The Esther Wattenberg Policy Award recognizes exemplary policy work and contributions impacting children and families in Minnesota. 

We will honor the 2025 Esther Wattenberg Policy Award recipient, Representative Jessica Hanson, for District 55A, and believer in “Politics of Care."

2024 Esther Wattenberg Policy Forum

In honor of the late Esther Wattenberg, the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare and the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) will host the 2024 Esther Wattenberg Policy Forum.

Thursday, December 12, 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Humber H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Hubert Humphrey Atrium

Dr. Marjorie Aunos will deliver the keynote address. Dr. Aunos is a researcher, speaker, and consultant on accessibility and inclusion. She teaches organizations and educators to solution-find and build environments that are accessible, inclusive, and welcoming to families with disabilities - in particular families headed by parents with disabilities.

On November 9, 2023, SCOTUS heard the case of Haaland v. Brackeen regarding the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in the United States. While many, many child welfare professionals and advocates support upholding ICWA, the approach to legal arguments can be complex and difficult to understand. CASCW hosted a forum in which speakers helped attendees understand what is at stake in this case as well as broke down the arguments each side presented to the court both written and oral. Tribal perspective and judicial perspectives also played a vital role in this forum.

• Examining Haaland v. Brackeen (ICWA Forum) YouTube video
• Audience Q&A Follow-up video
• American Indian Wellbeing Unit - Minnesota ICWA Warriors Powerpoint
• Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Mending Relational Ruptures: Skills Practice

Relational ruptures, or breakdowns in our bond with clients or in how we are working together and to what end, are a normal and sometimes messy part of working with clients. But repairing ruptures can lead to a stronger working alliance. This training will focus on practicing rupture repair skills, including naming the rupture/process comments, affirming sharing, validating the other's experience, exploring the meaning of the rupture, acknowledging contributions to the rupture, and inviting collaboration in how to move forward.

About the Presenter

Michael Van Wert, MPH, MSW, LICSW

Michael is a Clinical Trainer and Associate Director of Research and Evaluation at the Center for Practice Transformation, and community faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, where he trains practitioners to provide compassionate, evidence-based, and recovery-oriented care to people living with mental health disorders. Prior to this role, he worked as a practitioner in community psychiatry programs helping adults live with acute mental health challenges, including suicide, self-harm, and substance use.

The Blueprint for Hope: Helping Clients Build a Vision for Recovery

The road to recovery always starts with a vision, and this vision of a better future is a powerful catalyst for change. This interactive workshop equips child welfare professionals with the tools to help adults who may be struggling with negative behavior patterns, mental illness, and/or substance use challenges, to move beyond these behaviors and create a compelling vision for a life in recovery. Through hands-on practice with supportive techniques like strengths-finding, Socratic questioning, and therapeutic writing, you will learn to inspire hope and empower your clients to build a future defined by their values and aspirations.

Learning outcomes:

• Formulate client-centered recovery visions using strengths-finding techniques to collaboratively shift the focus beyond unhealthy patterns toward future possibilities.
• Apply foundational supportive relational skills including Socratic questioning and structured therapeutic writing, to inspire hope and facilitate client exploration of recovery-oriented goals.
• Integrate core client values and personal aspirations into the collaborative recovery planning process, empowering clients to build a meaningful and self-directed future.

About the Presenter

Steve Carlson, PsyD

Steve Carlson is a Clinical Trainer with the Center for Practice Transformation. He has had a full career in the mental health field spanning over forty years. His focus has included clinical work as a psychologist and psychotherapist in a variety of community mental health settings. Areas of work have been in day treatment for individuals with serious mental illness, in-home family therapy, and crisis intervention work. During the past twenty-five years, Steve’s interest and work has been assisting people who live on the edges of society, particularly those with serious mental illness who are also homeless, in their recovery journey. Steve has incorporated the Sanctuary Model for Trauma Informed Care as a primary model of practice in his work and life. As a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT), Steve provides workshops for agencies and groups in this approach.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare invites you to this free workshop, which provides an opportunity for supervisors working in child welfare to strengthen their use of effective supervision strategies that improve the resilience of supervisees, strengthen the supervisory relationship, and improve interactions between supervisees and youth and families. 

Workshop participants will be able to describe four effective supervision strategies and apply them in their supervision sessions. The strategies will include:

1. The affective check-in
2. Integrating practice
3. Providing strengths-based feedback
4. Reflecting on structural realities that inform practice

Thursday, May 28, 2026
9:00 am - 12:00pm*
Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy

This training event is FREE with CEUs provided! The CEUs offered for this event count toward the Minnesota requirement (260E.36) for child welfare workers to receive 15 hours of continuing education or in-service training each year. Attendees must be present for the entire workshop in order to receive CEUs.

Advanced Use of Effective Supervision Strategies: A Practice Lab for Supervisors presentation

Presenter

Dr. Mimi Choy-Brown

Mimi Choy-Brown is an associate professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, with over a decade of practice experience working in community mental health settings. Dr. Choy-Brown’s research interests are in community mental health services, implementation science, and clinical supervision. Her projects span across practices, practice settings, and research methods to identify effective strategies to implement effective care and improve meaningful outcomes for individuals, organizations, and communities.

Informed by over a decade of practice experience, her research covers clinical supervision strategies that yield routine anti-oppressive, recovery-oriented, and evidence-informed service experiences in public mental health care and community settings. Her work has examined supervision as an implementation strategy to integrate a range of effective interventions, including child welfare, person-centered care planning, assertive community treatment, family-based crisis intervention, measurement-based care, trauma-systems therapy for refugees, and interpersonal therapy.

Slideshow Presentation from Webinar

Resources from Webinar

From Friday, January 9, 2026

CASCW brings you an important webinar opportunity, brought to you in partnership with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and The Advocates for Human Rights. Due to numerous changes in the processing by the immigration courts of families and children facing removal or who otherwise lack permanent legal status, it is crucial that all child services workers in the state of Minnesota have a process in place to screen and make timely referrals for representation at the outset of any CHIPS proceeding. 

It is also important to provide youth and foster families with safety plans informed by current challenges. Given the challenges facing these youth, involving knowledgeable immigration counsel as part of the team assisting any youth without permanent legal status early is extremely important. Attend this training session to gain tools and knowledge to achieve these goals.  

This free, one-hour webinar training will show you how to connect with knowledgeable immigration counsel and to learn other extremely important guidance on best practices in serving non-citizen youth to ensure that they are able to benefit from the permanency plan developed by the CHIPS court. Attendees will hear from Alison Griffith, the Supervising Attorney at the Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid Immigration Law Project, and Kim Boche, the Supervising Attorney at The Advocates for Human Rights.

Alison Griffith

Alison is a Supervising Attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid’s Immigration Law Project. Alison is an immigration attorney who has a decade of experience representing non-citizen youth in removal proceedings. A significant portion of Alison’s practice has focused throughout her career on representing youth seeking asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. She has represented several non-citizen youth in CHIPS proceedings in attaining legal status and protection from deportation and has had the pleasure of collaborating with child welfare professionals from different counties across the state to achieve good outcomes for youth.

Kim Boche

Kim Boche is a Supervising Attorney with The Advocates for Human Rights’ Refugee & Immigrant Program, where they support pro bono and staff attorneys handling children’s asylum cases and other humanitarian immigration matters. Kim also manages a caseload of asylum and special immigrant juvenile cases. They graduated from the University of St. Thomas School of Law and previously represented indigent clients as a supervised practitioner with the First District Public Defender’s Office. Kim has served asylum seekers through roles with the Immigration Appellate Clinic at St. Thomas, the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC).

Webinar: Culturally Affirming Practice to Support Prevention

Tuesday, July 29, 2025
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CST

In-person at the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy
1711 County B Rd W Suite 200N, Roseville, MN 55113
Training Room Location: Esther Wattenberg Conference Center

Child welfare workers are often tasked with addressing complex needs under challenging circumstances. This interactive workshop introduces community asset mapping as a practical, strengths-based tool to support children, youth, and families through deeper community connection. Rather than focusing on what is missing or needed, asset mapping highlights the resources, relationships, and capacities already present in a community.

Participants will: 

• Identify the core components of asset-based community development
• Apply asset mapping tools
• Integrate asset mapping into case planning, collaboration, and advocacy

Presenter

Dr. Ceema Samimi

Dr. Ceema Samimi, PhD, MPA, MSSW, LGSW studies youth power. They have worked as a peer counselor, youth worker, community organizer and a Forensic Social Worker in the New York City family court. Ceema currently works with communities across Minnesota to identify alternatives to punitive and criminal consequences for youth, including supporting restorative practices.

Thursday, July 24, 2025
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CST

In-person at the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy
1711 County B Rd W Suite 200N, Roseville, MN 55113
Training Room Location: Esther Wattenberg Conference Center

This comprehensive training included widely applicable content that benefits all child welfare professionals. 

Presenters

Dr. Lynette M. Renner

Dr. Renner’s research focuses on interpersonal violence occurring in home and school environments, including child maltreatment, adult intimate partner violence (IPV), children’s exposure to IPV, and peer victimization.

Dr. Renner is a Professor; the Director of the PhD Program; and the Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota.

Domestic Abuse Project

DAP is one of Minnesota’s only providers of domestic abuse therapy that work with all members of the family - victim survivors, child witnesses, and those who use violence - to end the cycle of abuse.

CASCW is excited to bring you a new webinar opportunity, brought to you in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families. These webinar opportunities focus on community and family well-being, including strategies to prevent child maltreatment and system involvement. The opportunities are free, are one hour in length, and each one will offer something different. The second webinar in this series highlighted the importance and role of family service navigation.

This one-hour webinar focused on the importance and role of family service navigation. Attendees heard from partners at community and family resource centers, full-service community schools, and Foster Kinship grantees. Attendees learned about how to best support navigators in helping families access the resources that they need.

Each April, we recognize the importance of prevention of child abuse and neglect, across Minnesota and our nation. We also encourage the community to focus on helping families to thrive in their environments, as that can have a profound influence on the overall well-being of children and families. 

CASCW is excited to announce a brand new webinar series, brought to you in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families. Over the next several months, we will share a variety of webinar opportunities that focus on community and family well-being, including strategies to prevent child maltreatment and system involvement. The webinars are free, are one hour in length, and each one will offer something different. The first webinar in the series featured leaders from Chapin Hall. 

A growing body of evidence supports a rethinking of child welfare prevention to include economic and concrete supports, and pathways for families to access services and supports in their communities without unnecessary child welfare involvement. This webinar will share an overview of research on the relationship between increased access to economic and concrete supports and reduced risk of child maltreatment and child welfare involvement, while showcasing Family First Community Pathways as an innovative strategy for connecting families with supports in their community. 

The intersection of family economic insecurity and involvement with child welfare will be discussed, as well as examples of transformative child welfare agencies working to increase the provision of economic and concrete supports, strengthen family economic stability, provide upstream evidence-based practices, and prevent family separation. Reorienting and resourcing child and family well-being and child welfare prevention will require new mindsets, partnerships and policies—a vision for the way forward will be introduced. 

Part One: Inequitable School Absenteeism Policies: Causes, Consequences, and Strategies for Reform

In many school districts, White students get their tardies and absences excused more often than do students of color. In this webinar we document the scope of the inequity in five large Minnesota school districts, describe how it is caused by normal, day-to-day implementation of colorblind attendance policies, and suggest some initial remedies. The presentation will be followed by breakout sessions to develop and share additional ideas for immediate and long-term strategies to eliminate the structural racism embedded in attendance policies.

Clea McNeely, DrPH, has been studying truancy policies and interventions in Ramsey County, Minnesota since 2015. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Spencer Foundation.

Part Two: Making it Work: Serving Students with Disabilities During COVID-19

Join us for a closer look at special education for students with disabilities during COVID-19. This presentation will include a brief overview of the legal framework schools operate within, including an update on the most recent COVID-19 guidance from the Minnesota Department of Education. With our colleague, Christina Gonzalez, we take a pragmatic look at how schools and service providers are getting it right based on real-world examples. We will also discuss the challenges schools are facing. Please bring your questions and big ideas for making it work!

• Laura Tubbs Booth, Attorney, Ratwik, Roszak & Maloney, P.A.
• Elizabeth M. Meske, Associate Attorney, Ratwik, Roszak & Maloney, P.A.
• Christina Gonzalez, LCSW, Director of Student Support Services, Richfield Public Schools

Part Three: Education Partnerships for County-Involved Youth During COVID-19

Join us for a closer look at special education for students with disabilities during COVID-19. This presentation will include a brief overview of the legal framework schools operate within, including an update on the most recent COVID-19 guidance from the Minnesota Department of Education. With our colleague, Christina Gonzalez, we take a pragmatic look at how schools and service providers are getting it right based on real-world examples. We will also discuss the challenges schools are facing. Please bring your questions and big ideas for making it work!

Lynne Penke, Youth Education, Hennepin County Health and Human Services