Pelican Center for Children and Families

Court improvement program - training grant: child welfare training and education curriculum development and training event coordination, Louisiana child welfare training academy partner, statewide annual "together we can" conference on child welfare. Efforts support a competent child welfare workforce.

Court improvement program - basic grant: court improvement program judicial fellow, improving the quality of legal representation for Children and indigent parents and supporting advocacy for Children, support efforts to ensure a court appointed special advocate for every child who needs one. Participated in the state's federal child and family review and resultant program improvement plan, which identified training needs that will be developed and delivered by the Pelican Center.

Court improvement program - data grant: supports child welfare attorneys using management information systems to collect and analyze data relative to quality legal representation of Children and indigent parents in child welfare cases. Supports the court improvement program continuous quality improvement committee, interacts with division of Children and Families (dcfs) continuous quality improvement committee, captures, analyzes, and reports on mandatory child in need of care legal frame mandates and implementatoin of indicators of quality legal representation in child welfare cases. In addition, supported development and implementation of a management information system for attorneys representing abused and neglected Children. Data derived from these efforts support decision making around training and education programming.

My community cares (mcc): mcc is a community driven approach that strives to bring together community members and agencies committed to a shared vision of promoting child and family well-being and ensuring that Families can access the support they need to reach their full potential. The vision of mcc is for Children and Families to have access to services, activities, programs, resources, and supports in the communities where they live. The goal of mcc is to use trauma-informed and community-based services to improve the safety, stability, and wellbeing of Families. Children's trust fund - parenting cafes: parent cafes are physically and emotionally safe spaces where parents and caregivers talk about their challenges and victories of raising a family. Through individual deep self-reflection and peer to peer learning, participants explore their strengths, learn about the protective factors, and create strategies from their own wisdom and experiences to help strengthen their Families. Court improvement program - supplemental: address needs stemming from the covid-19 public health emergency to insure the safety, permanency, and well-being needs of Children are met in a timely and complete manner, the Louisiana cip will use the supplemental funds to accomplish the cip 5-year strategic plan deliverables. Funds used to support the continued implementation of the my community cares project. Blue cross blue shield of Louisiana foundation: mcc stakeholders determined the mcc should move from a pilot program to a sustainable long-term program and be expanded across the state to reduce the number of child and abuse cases. Each of the nine mcc sites will be located in the parish within the region that has the historically highest rate of child abuse and neglect cases and Children entering foster care based on dcfs data.

Pelican Center training: training includes both live and online opportunities for learning. Professional continuing education units are offered to trainees. My community cares initiative envisions a state where Children and Families are safe, stable, and self-sufficient: one family and one community at a time.

Together we can conference: the together we can conference is a multidisciplinary event providing professionals with child abuse and neglect training. The audience includes court appointed special advocates, child advocacy centers, judges, parents' attorneys, Children's attorneys, social workers, indigent defenders, ccfs workers, education leaders and students, foster/adoptive parents, law enforcement professionals, mental health professionals, and more. The twc conference began and continues to work with the goal of gathering all parties who work and/or volunteer with the child welfare arena so that all would receive the same information, build relationships to help protect Children as a team, and work together to focus on Children, their safety and well-being.the together we can conference offers in-depth learning workshops which address childhood welfare policy and practice concerns. There are keynote addresses focused on the latest trends and institute sessions allowing more intensive attention to the selected topics.