Blog

The importance of safe and supportive homes for youth in foster care cannot be overstated. The "Safe & Supportive Homes: Family Foster Care Recruitment and Retention" workgroup, part of Vaya's Pathways to Permanency project, has been making significant strides in enhancing the foster care experience for both children and resource families. As an extension of the highly successful virtual Treat Them Like Gold (TTLG) Learning Collaborative , the workgroup is now introducing the All-Staff...

Benchmarks’ Center for Quality Integration (CQi) builds and implements prototype projects in North Carolina and through that implementation the impact of effective training programs has been critical to sustaining long-term project successes. To that end, how well the facilitators or trainers understand and develop instructional strategies for adult learners is an important measure of training programs. Benchmarks’ CQi is thrilled to now include an “Adult Learning Principles” (ADLP) training...

Since 2021, the Benchmarks’ Center for Quality Integration has been consulting on Vaya Health's Pathways to Permanency project. This collaboration has brought together six dedicated workgroups, a lived experience council, and an internal Vaya workgroup to address the needs of professionals and foster parents supporting child welfare-involved youth. Through monthly meetings since April 2022, these workgroups have played a pivotal role in analyzing shared strengths and challenges, designing...

This month, Benchmarks is spotlighting Access Family Services and welcomes them to the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) team. Access Family Services (AFS) is a behavioral health agency that has been serving children and families throughout North Carolina since 1999. Their mission is to deliver culturally sensitive behavioral health services to individuals and families in the community using evidence-based practices to improve overall functioning and well-being. Access Family Services...

July is a time to celebrate all summer has to offer by building bridges and innovating with community to get to the heart of trauma-informed awareness and resilience building. This month, we’ve added new July dates to the summer 2023 *CRC* curriculum—but that’s only half of the good news. Last year, the CRC began as a pilot program. Now that it's evolved, what better time to bring accelerator participants together in a PACEs Connection CRC community than the summer? We are proud to announce...

Last month was National Foster Care Awareness month and in our May blog we emphasized the importance of caring for this specific population. This month, we are highlighting one of the most important aspects of promoting resilience for children placed in foster care: placement stability. As you may know, 99% of children in foster care experience some type of traumatic event. Despite the child welfare system’s best efforts, trauma can be exacerbated by the child’s involvement with the system,...

At Benchmarks' Center for Quality Integration, we handle implementation projects of varying lengths and scopes. Some projects may be as brief as a few months, while others can last for years. To track progress, we monitor some projects internally while enlisting stakeholders to monitor others. Regardless of the size of the project, selecting the appropriate planning tool is crucial. It should provide enough detail without being cumbersome, keep you on track, yet still be flexible enough to...

Children’s Homes of Cleveland County (CHCC) has advocated for youth to receive superb care through their participation in Benchmarks’ Partnering for Excellence (PFE). However, now that the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) is also growing, and more clinicians are needed, they are expanding their commitment to trauma-informed care. Benchmarks’ Standardized Assessment Protocol aims to link children over the age of 4 in foster care and In-Home Family Services to Trauma-intensive...

Benchmarks is excited to announce that another Cabarrus County Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division team will be joining the Standardized Assessment Protocol (SAP) project! This will make Cabarrus the first county to have both their Permanency Planning and In-Home Family Services (IHFS) teams onboarded into the project during the same project year. The Benchmarks SAP project is a process in which children ages four and over who enter Permanency Planning or IHFS receive a...

We live in a world where we're always connected through technology, with social media platforms and instant communication at our fingertips. But despite this apparent connectivity, there's a startling revelation from the Surgeon General: loneliness has become an epidemic in our society. It's time to explore the hidden consequences of our modern, tech-driven but socially disconnected lives. We used to think that loneliness only affected older people or those living in remote areas. But the...

Effective supervision and leadership are crucial for the success and engagement of organizations and their employees. However, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented significant challenges for many organizations, including staff retention and providing adequate training for new hires, especially those in management positions. Recognizing these concerns, Benchmarks has developed a groundbreaking training curriculum called “Supportive Supervision”. This comprehensive program,...

PACEs Connection is excited to kick off our 2023 Creating Resilient Communities (CRC) Annual Accelerator Program.