{"id":31691,"date":"2019-11-18T18:33:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T18:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caseyfamilyv2.wpengine.com\/quality-parenting-initiative\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:11:23","slug":"iniciativa-para-una-crianza-de-calidad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casey.org\/es\/quality-parenting-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00bfQu\u00e9 es la Iniciativa de Crianza de Calidad?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Summary<\/h3>\n

How would child welfare transform if its core mission was to ensure every child receives excellent parenting every single day?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Imagine a child welfare system organized around a single principle: Every child deserves excellent parenting, every day. How would that system look different from the one we have today? Would the system return children to their parents, or place them with relatives faster? Would reunifications or placements be more stable, offering children greater security and reducing the trauma of separation<\/span><\/a>? Would success be measured in terms of the ability to maintain and build strong relationships for children? These are the questions that the Youth Law Center\u2019s Quality Parenting Initiative<\/span><\/a> (QPI) asks jurisdictions to consider and address.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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The approach<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

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QPI is a process to strengthen foster care and improve permanency and well-being for children<\/b><\/span> by shifting systems away from a bureaucracy and toward an approach based on relationships. This includes focusing on relative caregivers and foster families\u2019 ability to partner with birth parents<\/span><\/a>, strengthen other meaningful relationships for children, and ensure children have access to the experiences that can help them heal, grow, and flourish. Child development and trauma research overwhelmingly indicates that children need consistent and effective parenting to thrive.1<\/sup><\/a> QPI\u2019s aim is to ensure that all children placed in out-of-home care, whether with a relative, fictive kin, or licensed family, receive high-quality parenting that meets their emotional, developmental, cognitive, and social needs. QPI also believes that all stakeholders within jurisdictions can and must work together to achieve this goal through reshaping culture, practice, and policy to encourage active and meaningful communication and partnership among birth families, relative caregivers, foster families, youth, and the child welfare system.<\/p>\n

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Since its inception in Florida in 2008, QPI has expanded to more than 75 jurisdictions in California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

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For more information on the principles of QPI, see our Q&A with Jennifer Rodriguez and Carole Shauffer of the Youth Law Center: How does the Quality Parenting Initiative support healthy childhoods and co-parenting with birth families?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Core values<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

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QPI is laser-focused on relationships. \u201cKids need relationships to thrive and recover from trauma,\u201d says Carole Shauffer, Youth Law Center\u2019s senior director of strategic initiatives.2<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 <\/span>This need for relationships cannot be put on hold while a family recovers from crisis or until an adoption can be finalized. Children need excellent parenting every single day \u2014 through committed, developmentally informed relationships with caring adults.<\/p>\n

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QPI also asserts that child welfare systems will not attract caregivers who can provide this kind of excellent parenting unless those caregivers are treated as key members of the team and supported in having strong relationships with the children in their care. That includes supporting relationships between birth and foster families.<\/p>\n

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According to the QPI approach, each jurisdiction must determine for itself how to put these core values into practice. Each community that engages in QPI begins by defining \u201cexcellent parenting\u201d and then identifies the policy and practice changes necessary to align with that definition.<\/p>\n

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The QPI approach is a \u201cbottom-up\u201d process that requires support from leadership. Leaders acknowledge the need for change and commit to following through, but the ideas and direction for change come from those who are most involved in and affected by the system<\/span><\/a>: birth parents, youth, kin, foster parents, and caseworkers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Children need relationships. There is nothing we have more research about than that. We need to rebuild child welfare, almost every single aspect, to develop excellent relationships.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

— Jennifer Rodriguez, Executive Director, Youth Law Center<\/cite><\/figcaption>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n
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Essential elements<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

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QPI is best described as a systems change process rather than a set of predetermined strategies. The key elements of QPI are:<\/p>\n

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  1. Defining the expectations of caregivers and the child welfare system around excellent parenting. <\/b><\/span>QPI jurisdictions first convene a broad group of stakeholders to define what excellent foster and kinship care means for their community. Stakeholders include birth parents, youth, kin, foster parents, and caseworkers, as well as other partners in the system, such as attorneys and court personnel, along with representatives from schools, health departments, faith communities, and other sectors. Together, this group develops expectations for providing and supporting excellent parenting for children in out-of-home placements.<\/li>\n
  2. Clearly communicating expectations to staff, caregivers, and other stakeholders.<\/b><\/span> Each jurisdiction develops a \u201cbrand statement\u201d describing the agency\u2019s expectations for kinship and foster caregivers, as well as what caregivers can expect in return from the child protection agency. This brand statement provides a roadmap for change and forms the basis for new recruitment and training strategies to attract quality caregivers. It lets caregivers know that the agency considers them to be valued and equal members of the team. Caregivers are expected to develop relationships with the child in their care while teaming with caseworkers and birth family members to support timely reunification, whenever possible. \u201cYou can\u2019t tolerate people who are providing inadequate parenting simply because you\u2019re recruiting for beds,\u201d Shauffer says. \u201cRecruiting for beds undermines relationships.\u201d A brand statement is not just a recruiting and training tool. It sets the standard for how people treat one another, and it is a reminder of the agency\u2019s new goal toward excellence. \u201cThe brand has to be lived internally before an agency can sell it to outsiders,\u201d Shauffer says.3<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Aligning system policy and practice with those expectations. <\/b><\/span>Once the brand is defined, stakeholders work together to identify barriers and solutions to improve their community\u2019s foster care system. Foster parents, youth, kin, birth parents, caseworkers, youth social workers, attorneys, judges, and other community partners all work together to identify the changes necessary to meet the goals of system improvement. Their innovations are based on their own experience and lessons learned through research on child development. Leadership commits to supporting QPI principles and listening to the voices from the field. While recognizing that change eventually may be needed in almost every aspect of the system, QPI encourages jurisdictions to begin with three relatively simple changes:
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