10 Years of Strengthening Families with CFE

Dear Friends, 

The fall of 2025 marks 10 years of Collaborative Family Engagement (CFE) in Texas. That means 10 years of strengthening families, building connections and transforming the way we engage children and their support networks in the child welfare system. What started as a vision has grown into a movement, with CASA programs, Child Protective Services (CPS), Community-Based Care providers and other community partners across Texas working together to strengthen families.  

In celebration of this remarkable anniversary, we are thrilled to share that we recently did a complete refresh of our Volunteer Pre-Service Training Manual and Facilitator Guide. The goal of the refresh was to fully embed Collaborative Family Engagement concepts and tools into the materials; while also shifting language so it reflects the reality of community-based care and other developments in the Texas foster care system. The Volunteer Pre-Service Training Manual will be used by all new CASA volunteers across Texas during their onboarding training.  

Colaboración con las familias is centered around the goal of providing children, parents and families with a dedicated support system they can depend upon even after CASA and CPS involvement. Here are what some of our partners had to say about CFE: 

• “CFE is a way to involve a child, a family, an entire families support network around planning for the child long-term. It is looking toward not just what we do today for safety, but how do we plan for this child’s network in the future?” – Kelly Allen, Former CVS Supervisor, Brazos County  

• “A child comes into the foster care system far too often with nobody, nobody can take care of the child, nobody can look after the child. What Collaborative Family Engagement does is it unpacks that ‘nobody’ and helps us to be able to find people who are important to this child and who the child is important to.” –  James Arrington, Advocate Supervisor, CASA of Williamson County  

• “It is more than just a tool, CFE is a practice, it is a philosophy, it is a part of who we should be when we are speaking to families and when we are speaking about families.”  
  – Leshia Fisher, CPS Regional Director, Region 6  

• “Collaborative Family Engagement is the way our system as the child welfare system should work every single day.”– Leshia Fisher, CPS Regional Director, Region 6  

• “CFE has transformed my work by helping my team with CPS and with CASA think outside the box and be innovative in our connections and engagement with families and the youth that we serve. It has allowed us to really transform families into something that’s not better, but whole.” – Leshia Fisher, CPS Regional Director, Region 6  

• “We’ve redefined helping a child.” — Tara O’Connell, Former CPS Regional Director, Region 11 

Texas CASA believes CFE is so successful because it prioritizes the need to work together to strengthen families, which helps provide accountability, safety, placement, permanency and healing. CFE also recognizes that children heal through relationships, and that every child has a family who can be found through perseverance. To learn more about Collaborative Family Engagement, visit our website or check out this folleto.  

We are deeply grateful to the working group who helped guide this refresh project for the Volunteer Pre-Service Training Manual and Facilitator Guide, including CASA of the South Plains, Voices for Children, CASA of Williamson County and CASA of Galveston County and the Texas CASA Collaborative Family Engagement Team for their time, insights and thoughtful contributions to this process. Thank you for the extraordinary passion and skill you bring to preparing and supporting new CASA volunteers across Texas. We hope the addition of CFE concepts and tools will strengthen the powerful work CASA volunteers do every day. 

Mis mejores deseos,