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Dec/Jan 2012Vol. 12, No. 9Special Issue on Parent Leadership and Family Engagement

The fall 2011 issue of the Virginia Child Protection Newsletter (VCPN) focuses on to the theme of strengthening family engagement and promoting parent leadership in child welfare. The issue includes an array of articles on the benefits of and challenges to family engagement, different approaches at the three levels of involvement—case level, peer-support level, and the systems level—and promising practices. Articles spotlight the Circle of Parents program for parent support and the Bridging the Gap program, which brings together foster and birth parents. An article on promoting father engagement underlines research on the benefits of father involvement and provides resources on locating, recruiting, and engaging fathers.

While geared toward Virginia agencies, the bulk of the articles have relevance for agencies around the country.

The Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, sponsored by the Virginia Department of Social Services' Child Protection Unit, is available on the James Madison University website:

http://psychweb.cisat.jmu.edu/graysojh/pdfs/Volume092.pdf  (1.99 MB)