Over the last eight years the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections has used the power of digital stories in our work with States, Territories, Tribes, Tribal Organizations, Tribal Consortia and Children’s Bureau grantees to promote continuous improvement in the delivery of child welfare services. Digital Storytelling takes full advantage of the advent/diffusion of increasingly more accessible technology tools like audio, photo, and video equipment. Storytellers can express their emotions combining their voices with images, sounds, and video, creating a short powerful digital movie that can be easily shared with a designated audience. At the NRCPFC we have used digital stories as therapeutic, educational, and advocacy tools.

In 2002 through two foundation grants we developed the Walking the Path program. This program was targeted to youth transitioning out of foster care. It used a group work model combining expressive arts and digital storytelling to provide young people with the opportunity for self-expressive and exploration, creativity, healing and growth within the safety of a supportive environment. Over the project’s tenure we trained public and private agency staff in the group work model and created over 50 personal healing stories with young people. These stories reflected their journey through the foster care system and were used as a therapeutic tool with their social worker or counselor.

In 2005 to support our Preparation for Adulthood – Supervising for Success Learning Circle Model curriculum which was a three year grant funded by the Children’s Bureau Discretionary Grants Program - ACF/DHHS targeted to supervisors working with adolescent cases we developed thirty digital stories. These stories represent the voices of supervisors, social workers and young people to help us better understand the issues of, youth permanency, placement stability, educational support, and relationship building from three perspectives. The stories are embedded into the five learning circles with questions to promote discussion. These stories allow the voices of both those working in and affected by the child welfare system to present in the training session.

We have also collaborated with other states to produce digital stories to raise awareness on specific issues. In 2009 we worked with the Louisiana Task Force on Legal Representation of Children in Child Protection Cases to produce five digital stories. The Task Force utilizes these digital stories to get their message across as they seek support and resources for their statewide implementation efforts.  They also use these stories to educate legislators, judges, judicial district staff, OCS workers, CASA workers, and other stakeholders regarding their reform measures in legal representation in child protections cases. Through the voices of a judge, social worker, CASA worker and two former foster youth we gain insight into the issues and challenges faced by parties involved in the court process.

Over the last decade, the inclusion of “family voice” has become an integral part of child welfare practice. Recently we have created stories with parents and our NRCPFC family partners thereby acknowledging the voices of those most affected by the child welfare system -- the families.  These stories are meant to increase the dialogue amongst professionals and to be included in child welfare training, supervision and advocacy efforts.

We have created Digital Stories from the Field to house many of these stories. Each story is accompanied by a written introduction and provides additional web-based resources for the viewer.