• How AFS Pivoted to Accommodate In-person Visitation During COVID-19

    Too often great ideas are kept in-house without recognizing their potential to create change beyond the

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  • Alternative Family Services wins COA’s 2020 Innovative Practices Award

    COA would like to congratulate Alternative Family Services (AFS), a Resource Family Agency and mental health service provider serving Northern California, as winner of the 2020 Innovative Practices Award for its “Enhanced Visitation Model: Foster

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  • Additional Foster and Adoption Resources for Resource Parents

    A big thank you to Alternative Family Services (AFS) for this guest post! Did you read the earlier COA post on “6 Resources for potential foster parents” and are looking for more information and insights? Then you’ve come to the right

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  • 30 Days to Family®: Hear from the 2018 Innovative Practices Award Winner

    Too often great ideas are kept in-house without recognizing their potential to create change beyond the communities where they are born. COA’s Innovative Practices Award (IPA) identifies, documents, and celebrates examples of successful

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  • 6 Resources for Potential Foster Parents

    Has all the buzz around National Foster Care Month (or the new HBO documentary!) inspired you to think about becoming a foster parent yourself? With 30-50% of foster parents stepping down each year and more and more children being placed into the

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  • Family Builders: Best Practice for Serving LGBTQ Youth in Foster Care

    The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 assures the permanency, safety, and well-being for all children and youth in the foster care system. These three tenets serve as the framework upon, which the COA accredited organization, Family

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  • Child Welfare’s Complicated Relationship with the Opioid Epidemic

    You are probably familiar with the ripple effect. The term refers to a sequence of events that is triggered by a particular incident or occurrence. The most common example is dropping an object into a body of water…let’s say a stone in a lake.

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