Adolescents and Families for Life:

A Toolkit for Supervisors

by Robert G. Lewis & Maureen S. Heffernan

Adolescents and Families for Life: A Toolkit for Supervisors is a unique workbook for child welfare supervisors who need to guide, train and supervise staff to ensure permanence for the adolescents in their case loads. The Toolkit provides practical information, training ideas and exercises to convince workers that teens need, want, and are able to achieve permanent family connections.

This first book in the Toolkit series is organized into three sections: Making the Case for Permanence; Choosing, Using and Developing Tools with Teens; and Supporting Permanence. The Toolkit presents these issues in 27 coordinated but short, teachable units focusing on the following:

• the importance of permanence for adolescents
• how key factors in adolescent development affect permanence work
• helping teens accept permanent family relationships
• identifying barriers within the child welfare system
• building and mending relationships and identifying permanency resources
• supporting the permanent placement
• engaging the teen in child-specific recruitment

The goal of Adolescents and Families for Life is to teach supervisors how to train staff in this important but difficult area of social work practice. Each unit provides training-friendly material such as overviews of key objectives, suggested group exercises, handouts, training tips, and key-ins to 110 slides provided on the CD included on the back cover.

This Toolkit was developed by Robert G. Lewis and Maureen S. Heffernan in an actual training setting in Colorado. It has been used in over 30 agencies that serve New York City teens, and in 25 states. Robert Lewis provides consulting and training to child welfare organizations with a focus on planning for permanence, policy and practice development. He is a frequent keynote speaker and is author of three books on permanence for adolescents. Maureen Heffernan is a child welfare consultant who specializes in adoption and permanency issues. She is active as a trainer for foster and adoptive parents and child welfare professionals. She is also currently an Adjunct Instructor at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches social policy and community-based practice courses. She is the author of two books on permanency work for adolescents.