Empowering Your Work:
Welcome, CASA volunteers! At Connect Our Kids, we understand the critical role you play in the lives of children and youth in foster care. Your ability to find, engage, and maintain connections with family is paramount to achieving permanency. Our specialized tools—Family Connections and People Search—are designed to make this work more efficient and effective.
Family Connections: Visualizing the Network
Family Connections is a powerful tool that transforms fragmented information into a clear, visual family tree, support maps, and relational networks. It helps you see the whole picture and identify potential resources faster.
How to Incorporate Family Connections into Your Work
Initial Case Review and Assessment
Start building the network from day one. Input known relatives, family friends, and other important people in the child’s life. This visual representation helps identify immediate placement options or resources for support.
Identify Gaps and Missing Kin
The visual map makes it easy to see which branches of the family tree are unexplored. Is the maternal grandfather missing? Are there paternal aunts you haven’t yet located?
Prepare for Meetings and Court
Use the network map to clearly articulate the child’s current connections and highlight missing or needed connections to the court and other stakeholders. A visual aid can be much more impactful than a list of names.
Engage with the Child
Share appropriate parts of the map with the child (as permitted and developmentally appropriate) to help them understand their history and feel connected to their heritage.
Collaboration with Agencies
Share the generated network with caseworkers or other professionals to ensure everyone is working from the same, most comprehensive family picture.
Key Benefits
Streamlined organization of complex family data.
A clear roadmap for targeted search efforts.
Improved communication with the child and the court.
People Search: Locating Vital Connections
People Search is the robust, private-data engine that fuels your efforts to locate and verify the contact information for potential family and support members.
How to Incorporate People Search into Your Work
Verify Contact Information
Before attempting outreach, use People Search to confirm current addresses, phone numbers, and potential email addresses for known family members. This saves time and ensures successful initial contact.
Locate Hard-to-Find Relatives
When you have a name but no current location, People Search can help you find current or recent addresses, helping you bypass common barriers like outdated public records.
Find Maiden or Married Names
If you have a name but the search is unsuccessful, People Search can sometimes surface related names or aliases, leading you to successful connections.
Integrate with Family Connections
As you find new relatives using People Search, immediately add them to your Family Connections map to keep your network up-to-date and generate new search leads.
