For two decades, the current Kempe Center faculty have been supporting the implementation of innovation in systems and communities that work with vulnerable children, youth and families. Three of these more well-known innovations are family group decision making (FGDM), family engagement and differential response. The Conference on FGDM and Family Engagement has been an annual event since 1997 that has served as an invigorating learning platform for thousands who have been engaged in the implementation of family meeting and engagement processes around the globe. In 2005, our team launched the Differential Response Conference, again attracting a global audience of innovators interested in restructuring and revamping the CPS system through the implementation of differential response. Over time, we found the topics, audiences, and interests of these two conferences began to converge so we merged them in 2015 into the International Conference on Innovations in Family Engagement.This year’s conference will be held at the Vail Marriott Mountain Resort in the Lionshead Village of Vail, Colorado.
On Friday, October 19, 2018, Ms. Davis presented on Pathways to Success: Early Lessons from Developing a Model Intervention to Prevent Homelessness Among Youth Aging Out of Foster Care. Colorado’s Pathways to Success Demonstration Project is a multi-year, multi-phase project awarded through a grant to CDHS, Child Welfare Division from the Children’s Bureau to develop (Phase I), implement and test (Phase 2) a model intervention aimed at reducing homelessness among youth aging out of the foster care system. This project is being implemented and tested through a multi-sector, multi-agency approach made up of county child welfare agencies, runaway and homeless youth providers, community service partners and the evaluation team at Center for Policy Research. The Project Director, Trevor Williams, Colorado Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division, will describe early implementation lessons, successes and challenges, and highlight innovative ways youth voice was incorporated into the design of the model intervention. Ms. Davis will provide an overview of the formative evaluation being conducted, including a description of youth enrolled in the intervention and the ongoing continuous quality improvement approach to monitoring performance that is tied to key outcome areas of permanency, well-being, education, employment, and housing. Early outcomes from follow-up interviews with enrolled youth 12-months post-enrollment will be presented.
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