This guide helps child welfare agencies and their partners craft more family-focused and neighborhood-based service systems. It suggests a framework that agencies can use to assess their current policies and practices and develop plans to integrate Family to Family values, principles, and strategies into existing initiatives and activities. Family to Family is a strategic approach to systems change that enlists four strategies for restructuring and strengthening the child welfare system: foster family recruitment and support planning, timely decision making around placement, building community partnerships, and using data to track and improve agency performance. Drawing on the efforts of several early Family to Family sites and the original Family to Family tools, this guide describes site activities and approaches to help agencies begin to change practice and realign their system. Seven appendixes present Family to Family compatibility with the Adoption and Safe Families Act and Child and Family Services reviews; Family to Family strategic planning questions; steps for creating and mapping longitudinal data files; experiences of children entering child welfare custody 1996-2000; Family to Family site coordinator job description; best practices for out-of-home placement (preparing the child); and family group conferencing and team decision making. (SM)