The Arkansas Children’s Trust Fund (AR CTF) is the primary resource for the prevention of child abuse and neglect in the state. It is housed in the Prevention and Reunification Unit (PRU) within the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

One of the strategies the AR CTF has focused on during this year is to build services for families into existing systems or infrastructures versus funding individual projects. They believe an investment in existing systems will help to create longer-term sustainability. The Baby & Me project is a good example of this strategy.

The AR CTF brought together multiple state agencies to develop the program and created a multi-agency advisory board to oversee the project. The Director of Child and Adolescent Health, the Statewide Coordinator for the WIC program, and the Southeast Regional Coordinator – all from the Arkansas Department of Health, worked with the AR CTF director to conceptualize the program. The Department of Family and Preventive Medicine – Research and Evaluation Division (RED) from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to help with a curriculum and an evaluation design. And, partners from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock – MidSOUTH training Academy to assist with developing implementation plans and expansion into three additional areas of the state. All these partners now comprise the Baby & Me Advisory Board which meets weekly to monitor the success of the program.

The Baby & Me project is designed to provide parenting education and support to women in Woman Infants and Children (WIC) clinics across the state. The program is built upon the existing infrastructure of the WIC clinics – a place where families already frequently visit and that are available in every county. areas. The Baby & Me program was developed partly in response to the lack of newborn home visiting services.

Parent Support Mentors are housed full time at the WIC clinics and enroll moms into the program during their last trimester of the pregnancy. Women are recruited when they come to the clinic to renew their WIC nutritional benefits each month. Parent Mentors are providing one-on-one monthly sessions with mothers beginning prenatally and through the first six months of the baby’s life. Each session includes a brief educational lesson and a check of developmental milestones followed by activities to promote parent/child interaction. For each module the mother completes, she is given a package of diapers and wipes as an incentive. Parents are also connected to community services and supports as needed.

The curriculum and script for the program developed by the Department of Family and Preventative Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences were based on the leading causes of infant death and injury in our state. In addition, the parent/child activities at the end of each lesson are meant to promote a nurturing and attachment between parent and child.

There are seven modules and include the following topics:

• Safe Sleep 
• Dealing with Infant Crying 
• The Importance of Routines 
• Stress and Depression 
• Home Safety (water safety, poisons, burns, falls, choking, guns)
• Preparing for Discipline 
• Understanding Developmental Milestones (social-emotional, language, cognitive, movement)

The program is currently in six WIC clinics in the Delta region of the state, which is the poorest part of the state with the fewest resources. The Delta region of Arkansas is sparsely populated and has some of the highest poverty rates. Each of the six counties has a population of under 20,000 people and three of the six counties have a majority African American population. The overall child poverty rate in the region is 37%. More than half of the children (51.6 percent) received supplemental nutrition assistance and 36% are eligible for Medicaid. In addition, 42.9 percent of children in the Delta are overweight or obese and there were 8.1 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to the national average of 6.8 deaths. By all measures, the Delta region is at a significant disadvantage and is an underserved area of the state.

Furthermore, by offering services at the various WIC clinics in the Delta, we are reaching most of the pregnant and parenting women that live in the area. With the WIC eligibility criteria being an income of 185% of the federal poverty level, we are reaching both low- and- moderate-income families.

The plan is to expand to three additional WIC clinics in the upcoming year in more urban-like areas of the state. And to expand the programming to include weekly support groups being offered to mothers or fathers that would like extra support. We will be using a program called Mentoring Youth Through Empowerment (MYTE). MYTE is an eight-session intervention the helps caregivers understand the impact of trauma, learn trauma-sensitive parenting, and learn how to create a safe and more nurturing home environment. The lessons are not meant to be sequential, so parents can enter the sequence at any time. Another consideration is to offer the MYTE program as a continuation of services to parents after they have completed the seven Baby & Me modules.

The reality is we will probably never have enough resources to provide home visiting services to every part of our state. With the Baby and Me program, we are testing the concept of providing similar educational services to all parents.

The Office of Child Abuse Prevention (OCAP), housed within the Children and Families Services Division (CFSD) of the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), is the State Lead Agency for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) funding. In this capacity, the OCAP oversees the distribution of approximately $2 million of CBCAP funding to 57 counties in California and an additional $1.3 million of CBCAP funding distributed through statewide grant awards.

Two comprehensive approaches using CBCAP funding are described below. These include Innovative Partnerships, a series of five individual grants, each of which seeks to increase collaboration between county child abuse prevention councils and child welfare or with other Child Abuse Prevention Councils (CAPCs) and Community in Unity, a series of five individual grants, that focus on ground-level collective impact projects.

Innovative Partnerships

The Innovative Partnerships grants provide funding for statewide regional collaborative networks between county CAPCs and community stakeholders. The intent of the project is to improve child abuse prevention outcomes by strengthening families through increased availability of meaningful resources. These grants encourage coordination by supporting CAPC coalitions across the state to develop regional collaborative networks with community stakeholders to improve child abuse prevention outcomes.

The OCAP first funded the Innovative Partnerships grant for three years between Fiscal Year (FY) 2016-2019 decided to re-release the Innovative Partnerships grant for competitive bid to fund projects in FY 2019-20 and 2020-21. Five of the original grantees were selected for award: the Child Abuse Prevention Center of Sacramento, Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA) of Mendocino and Lake Counties, Contra Costa Child Abuse Prevention Council, Fresno Council on Child Abuse Prevention and Center for Family Strengthening.

In FY 2019-20 and 2020-21, all the funded agencies will build upon the work they did in the previous grant term:

• The Fresno Council on Child Abuse Prevention will be the lead agency for the Central Valley Regional Child Abuse Prevention Council to provide coordinated efforts to address gaps in the prevention field, provide education about substance exposure and other major risk factors within the region.
• The Contra Costa Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) will provide management of the Greater Bay Area Child Abuse Prevention Council Coalition with the goal of mitigating the major risk factors for child maltreatment and build protective factors.
• The Child Abuse Prevention Center of Sacramento will lead the Sierra-Sacramento Region Child Abuse Prevention Coalition to provide coordinated efforts to address poverty and substance abuse in the region, while building Protective Factors to reduce risk factors of child abuse and neglect.
• CASA of Mendocino and Lake Counties will lead the North Coast Regional Child Abuse Prevention Council to expand capacity in each county, promote community resources and engage community members.
• Finally, the Center for Family Strengthening will be the lead agency for the Coastal Tri-Counties Regional Child Abuse Prevention Council for the development of a regional approach to prevent child maltreatment. Based on localized research and data mapping, the grantee will implement local prevention plans and develop a regional sustainability plan for addressing and preventing child maltreatment.

The OCAP chose to award the above-highlighted organizations with an additional grant term because of the success they showed during their previous Innovative Partnerships grant term. Activities completed during the FY 2018-2019 year of the previous grant term by Innovative Partnerships grantees are described below:

Greater Bay Area

The Greater Bay Area Coalition, led by Contra Costa CAPC for the purpose of this grant, has been working together successfully for approximately 20 years. The activities in this grant have been used to re-energize these existing partnerships, establish new partnerships, and to develop and improve the materials distributed to families and professionals. During the 2018-19 fiscal year, they began planning to bring in CAPCs from beyond our region through a statewide convening to be held in October of 2019 in Solano County. They have also started opening Coalition meetings to additional stakeholders to encourage new collaborations and partnerships.

The coalition distributed the materials they previously developed for training mandated reporters, which can also be used as a resource for those who have already completed training, which integrated the Five Protective Factors. The pamphlet they created can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.bayareapreventchildabuse.org/pdf/CAMandatedReporterLawBooklet-GBACAPCC.pdf

Sacramento-Sierra Regional Partnership

The Sacramento-Sierra Regional Partnership, led by the CAPC of Sacramento, is comprised of 13 counties. They have created the Opioid Tool Kit, containing resources to educate family service organizations about the current opioid epidemic and ways to better serve families involved. The coalition believes that by mitigating factors such as drug use, it will in turn help mitigate cases of abuse and neglect in their region. The tool kit is aimed at parents of children ages prenatal to five. The Sacramento-Sierra Regional Partnership has also provided training about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Trauma-Informed Care. Amador, Placer, Sacramento, and Yolo Counties have agreed to test the tool kit with one agency per county and document successes and areas for improvement after implementing the tool kit. In FY 2018-19 all toolkit materials were completed and launched on May 1, 2019. A survey was also made available for pilot agencies to provide feedback regarding the toolkit for improvements to be made. To pilot the toolkit, each County would engage 2 partners to implement it, then follow-up with survey participation.

Also, as part of a partnership with the Kids Plates California Grant, eight Innovative Partnership Counties received bicycle helmets to distribute to low income families in their communities, seven Innovative Partnership Counties received up to 3 different sizes of life jackets to distribute to low income families and all program counties were offered convertible car seats and/or children’s booster seats to distribute to their low income at-need families. This led to raising awareness of the importance of car seat safety knowledge and the distribution of local area Car Seat Technician Certification Trainings that would be taking place in several Counties throughout California in the 2019.

CAPC Sacramento, in partnership with OCAP, successfully co-hosted year two of Kids-Day at the Capitol on April 11, 2019. As a result of attendance at the Child Abuse Prevention Summit, in San Diego, the Sacramento County Prevention Cabinet was formed, of which CAPC Sacramento is a founding member.

Coastal Tri-Counties Child Abuse Prevention Coalition

The Coastal Tri-Counties Coalition is a partnership between Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties. The coalition finds effective ways to engage parents in the community and expand opportunities for parent leadership within their counties. The Coastal Tri-Counties CAP Coalition is working with Strategies 2.0 to design an innovative Five Protective Factors training for parent leaders based on a Parent Café framework. Identified parent leaders will learn how to educate neighbors, friends, and family members on the Five Protective Factors and help promote family strengthening and child abuse prevention messages.

The coalition made the goal to reach out to minorities, single mothers, single fathers, and at risk homeless and other unrepresented groups by providing The Five Protective Factors Cafecitos’ presentations in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County. The Family Strengthening Educators recruited participants in their own community to participate at their community Cafecitos’.

North Coast Child Abuse Prevention Council Coalition

The North Coast CAP Coalition includes Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, and Lake counties. The coalition is focused on expanding each CAPC’s capacity and promotes available resources within each community within the region. Using social media and traditional media, the coalition engages members of various communities within the region and connects them to programs and services that will help reduce child abuse and neglect within the region.

In FY 2018-19, the coalition’s counties each developed strategic plans to address specific issues within their communities and created messaging to conduct public information prevention campaigns. The coalition also made a significant push to raise awareness during Child Abuse Prevention month in April through the following efforts: pinwheel challenges, Taco Bell placemat art contest, Radio PSAs, Family Life magazine ads, articles in school newsletters and websites, materials distrusted in various ways throughout the communities, proclamations, flag raising events and regional trainings about Trauma Informed Care.

Central California Coalition of CAPCs

The Central California Coalition of CAPCs includes CAPCs from Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tulare counties.

In FY 2018-19, the coalition hosted another successful training in San Joaquin, Fresno and Kern for substance abuse and child maltreatment with a cumulative 698 attendees between the three trainings. The trainings were led by Lisa Frederiksen, who has personal experience with secondhand drinking (SHD), a concept she first introduced in 2009, and working to overcome its impact. She has spent more than a decade researching, writing, consulting and speaking on a range of SHD-related topics such as addiction, substance misuse, mental illness, co-occurring disorders and childhood trauma, her explanations for which are all anchored in current brain research.

Community in Unity

The Community in Unity grants provided funding for support and development of strategic, collective impact projects that address the major risk factors of abuse and neglect, specifically poverty and substance abuse.
The OCAP funded five collective impact Community in Unity grants. Each grant involved a different region of the state with its own goals, objectives, and performance measures. The purpose of the Community in Unity grants was to support collective impact projects specific to the needs of each of the grantees’ communities, with a focus on either substance abuse, poverty, and/or economic challenges, as these tend to be the highest risk factors of child abuse and neglect. For the purpose of this set of grants, collective impact was defined by the OCAP as being built upon five interconnected components that can produce strong alignment and lead to large-scale results. The five components included: a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support. The Community in Unity grants officially concluded at the end of FY 2017-18 but were given the option of a third-year extension, which four of the original five grantees accepted. The Community in Unity grant program will officially conclude July 2019.

UpValley Family Centers of Napa County

UpValley Family Centers is a school-based family resource center in Calistoga that participated in the Calistoga Community Schools Initiative. Through collaborative action, this initiative aimed to reduce substance abuse among youth and parents in Calistoga with preventative approaches and connections to quality resources.

UpValley Family Center’s accomplishments during the three-year grant period from FY 2016-17 through 2018-19 include:

• Teen participants attended the 18th Annual Cesar Chavez Leadership Conference and Celebration at University of California, Davis.
• UpValley served 221 students with the Calistoga Community Schools initiative.
• UpValley had three staff trained in Triple P Teen and two staff trained in Stepping Stones.
• Adelante parent leader, Julie Garcia, was recognized by the OCAP with a Parent Leadership Award.
• In responding to the Tubbs Fire, UpValley connected 530 households to vital resources, emergency financial assistance and case management. They also opened a Calistoga Fire Recovery Center that continues to serve affected households as the community supports long-term recovery.
• Motivated and engaged parents to become involved in the community through the Adelante parent leadership group.
• Reduced substance abuse among youth and parents in Calistoga with preventative approaches and by providing connections to quality resources.
• Received over 20% of the district’s population in referrals for counseling services.
• Gained the Mayor’s support to partner with Parks and Recreation and the City Planner to install park renovations in the coming fiscal year.
• Successfully advocated for High School Equivalency Classes (GED) for residents beginning in the fall of 2019.
• Served over 700 individuals in Calistoga and St. Helena in 2019 through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.
• Developed the “tech time” activity for youth to teach seniors to use new technology devices.

Colusa County Community Advocates for Parents and Children

The Colusa County Community Advocates for Parents and Children, in partnership with Colusa Country First 5 Commission, runs the Colusa Family Resource Center (FRC). Through this funding, the center provided parenting classes, connected families to emergency services and social services, provided substance use treatment, budgeting education, nutrition education and trainings in computer and job skills.

Some of Colusa County Community Advocates for Parents and Children’s accomplishments during the three-year grant period from FY 2016-17 through 2018-19 include:

• The Colusa County Community Advocates for Parents and Children held the Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting Event for the new Colusa FRC. Many community members attended and were able to learn about the services offered at the FRC. Children and families enrolled in their programs presented for the Chamber of Commerce and some City Officials about the impact of their programs.

• Implemented Girls on the Run, which is a program for girls in third through sixth grades focusing on teaching resiliency and leadership skills. There was a 15-person cap on the program, in which 14 girls consistently participated.
• Proclamations for CAP Month at the City of Williams, City of Colusa, and County BOS meetings allowed the grantee to raise awareness about the work they do in the community to local leaders.
• Successfully implemented the following new programs: Growing Start Multi-Age Parent Playgroups in Colusa FRC, Stonyford Library, and planning for implementation in the Princeton Library; Imagination Stations at the Library; Lego Club at the Library; Family Hui.
• Hosted a 3K Color Run for the community during Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Health Care Foundation for Ventura County

The Santa Paula Collective Impact Project focused on recruiting and building the capacity of Santa Paula community members to participate in a collective impact project to address the needs of at-risk families.

Some of the Santa Paula Collective Impact Project’s accomplishments in FY 2017-18 are:

• Organized two focus groups to gather information about communication needs and culturally informed guidelines to improve communication between service providers and the community.
• Developed the Culturally Linguistically Appropriate Standards (CLAS) Guidelines by the CLAS Taskforce. This will be a working document for all service providers in the community to assess preparedness and ability to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of the populations they serve.
• Health Care Agency enhanced one stop resource center by adding shower pods for use by homeless or others in need.
• Held a seminar on the Resident Leadership Academy (RLA) to encourage and empower community members to participate in a training to build capacity to improve their community. Ventura County Public Health will be offering the RLA series in fiscal year FY 2018-19.

South Bay Center for Counseling

The South Bay Center for Counseling used social media to widely disseminate resources and tools to promote child abuse and neglect prevention to parents, specifically those who are low-income and/or at-risk, to build their capacities to productively engage in and contribute to their children’s lives and their communities. The organization also worked to strengthen the capacity of care providers so they could more effectively serve children and families in their local communities through building resiliency.

Some of the South Bay Center for Counseling accomplishments during the three-year grant period from FY 2016-17 through 2018-19 are:

• Disseminated the Preschool Without Walls facilitation curriculum to local Neighborhood Action Councils (neighborhood-based and resident-driven entities which facilitate community organization).
• The organization was recognized by the Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection as a key stakeholder in prevention efforts.
• The Facebook Coordinators have developed strong connections with online group participants through engagement and outreach efforts within the community.
• Implemented Preschools Without Walls and used social media to engage parents in preschool activities, empowering parents to teach their children and making learning activities more accessible to all.
• Provided parental resiliency workshops, allowing parents to learn about ACEs and new tools for stress management and parenting skills.
• Increased household financial stability by partnering with credit unions to provide families with financial services.
• Participated in Kids’ Day at the Capitol in 2018 with over 48 families from the community traveling to Sacramento together to attend.

Safe and Sound

Safe and Sound utilized a collective impact initiative entitled “Our Children Our Families” to unite public and private partners for the purpose of emphasizing the focus on prevention and ensuring consistency with governing state legislation. Through multiple collaborative meetings, the program engaged both elected officials and community-based organizations to implement a city-wide five-year plan to address child abuse prevention.

Some of Safe and Sound’s accomplishments during the three-year grant period from FY 2016-17 through 2018-19 include:

• Met with Family Resource Center (FRC) and community organization partners about building a system of care organized around Protective Factors.
• Met with key people related to the work on creating the Our Children Our Families Action Plan as well as furthered their efforts to build collaboration among the executive directors of FRCs.
• Led the Action Planning towards a unified child maltreatment prevention target.
• Held an event on the steps of City Hall where they had a representative from the Mayor’s Office as well as a School Board member, four city supervisors, the head of the Family & Children’s Services division of the Human Services Agency, and three executive directors from FRCs speak. Moreover, representatives from a broad cross-section of the community turned out for the event, including children and caregivers, social workers, educators, healthcare professionals, public health officials, and professionals in community-based organizations. The event and the announcement of the Our Children Our Families child maltreatment target received media coverage in the San Francisco Examiner.
• Their annual Blue-Ribbon luncheon had over 600 attendees from across the city, including philanthropists, community members, public officials, and business people.
• Published the Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of San Francisco, in 2017.
• Appointment of Katie Albright as Co-Chair of Our Children, Our Families Council’s initiative to reduce the rate of child abuse by 50% in the next five years.
• Raised awareness for Child Abuse Prevention Month by hosting an event on the steps of City Hall and receiving media coverage in the San Francisco Examiner in 2018.
• Gained the attention of policy makers and partners in child abuse prevention efforts with data related to the Economics of Child Abuse study.
• Worked with the San Francisco Unified School District to develop recommendations for an in-person mandated reporter training for district staff.
• Brought together a cross-sector training committee to conduct a needs assessment of citywide trainings on family violence and identifying gaps in trainings.

The Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is the public child welfare agency and the CBCAP lead agency for the District of Columbia. CFSA’s mission is to promote the safety, permanency, and wellbeing of abused and neglected children in the District of Columbia and to strengthen their families. CFSA’s strategic agenda, known as the Four Pillars Strategic Framework, guides CFSA’s efforts to improve outcomes for children and families.

The Pillars are values-based and strategy-focused, and each includes a series of specific outcome targets:

• Pillar One: Front Door – Families stay together safely.
• Pillar Two: Temporary Safe Haven – Children and youth are placed with families whenever possible. Planning for permanence begins the day a child enters care.
• Pillar Three: Well Being – Children and youth in foster care maintain good physical and emotional health. Children and youth in foster care get an appropriate education and meet expected milestones. Youth in
  foster care pursue activities that support their transition to adulthood.
• Pillar Four: Exit to Positive Permanency – Children and youth leave the child welfare system quickly and safely. Youth actively prepare for adulthood.

CFSA’s primary prevention work is conducted in partnership with the DC Children’s Trust Fund (DCCTF). Under terms of the current grant agreement, DCCTF receives and administers a portion of CBCAP funding for the District. The role of DCCTF is to strengthen families and protect children from abuse and neglect through public education and parent support programs. DCCTF plays a key role in support and capacity-building for the CBCAP grantees. Specifically, DCCTF develops the following resources:

• Public education materials that promote the primary prevention of child maltreatment
• Messages that emphasize and promote ways to strengthen families and develop healthy children
• Monetary, programmatic, and in-kind resources that support primary prevention efforts by leveraging funds and resources

CFSA collaborates closely with stakeholders such as the DC Superior Court, community-based organizations, advocacy groups, and service providers to support prevention of child maltreatment. Since 2001, DC Superior’s Family Treatment Court (FTC) has supported reunification through an effective partnership among the Family Court Operations Division (Family Court), CFSA, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), and the District’s Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA).

The Agency continues to fund community-based preventive services primarily through its ongoing contracted partnership with the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaboratives (Collaboratives). Specifically, CFSA maintains arrangements with sister DC government agencies to co-locate staff at each of the five Collaborative sites. For example, to support the health and well-being of families, there are co-located nurses and mental health specialists from the Department of Behavioral Health (DBH). These co-located positions are IV-E Waiver funded.

CBCAP funding supports what CFSA calls the “front yard” – a network of coordinated child abuse primary prevention resources and activities for children, youth and families that are not involved in the child welfare system but may be at-risk of involvement. To meet the specific needs of different populations, CBCAP-funded prevention programs included both out-of-home and home-based services, ranging from direct skill training to child behavior management and home safety to prevent child maltreatment. Services are also tailored to enhance parent-child communication to reduce risk for adolescent substance use, to build nurturing parenting skills, and to expand culturally specific interventions.

Through dedicated evidence-based programs, delivered by the three diverse community-based organizations, home visitation provides targeted family assistance, parent education, and empowerment and family strengthening.

Four additional grantees work within specific neighborhoods where CFSA has high numbers of families involved with the child welfare system to implement PESP programs. Grantees provide services to address the specific needs of this population. Each of the four PESP providers offered parents various supportive services, such as adult literacy, family events, car safety, job or vocational assistance, in-home parent coaching or others, depending on the needs of the family.

The Hawaii CBCAP grant is overseen by the Hawaii Department of Health and continues to lead the child maltreatment prevention activities across the islands through four principal efforts – (1) the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) Family Support and Violence Prevention Section (FSVPS), (2) the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant Program, (3) the Early Childhood Action Strategy (ECAS), and (4) the Hawaii Children’s Trust Fund (HCTF).

SMALLIFY

The CBCAP Coordinator submitted an application to the Hawaii Leadership Forum to be part of the SMALLIFY Accelerator for Innovation Sprints teamwork. The application included the challenge that would be worked on during the SMALLIFY training. The team consisted of the Sexual Violence Prevention and Domestic Violence Prevention Coordinators, the Department of Health Center for Disease Control Epidemiologist, and a consultant epidemiologist as well as the CBCAP Coordinator.

The team’s challenge was to identify sexual, domestic and child abuse-related data sources, and identify and select indicators/measures that would determine if outcomes were met or not met, and if the process was effective. The primary stakeholders included ECAS, the Department of Health and DHS, early childhood providers, early childhood advocates, and other community-based organizations/agencies who work with young children and families, and parents/caregivers. The benefits to be gained with the challenge is improving the well-being of Hawaii’s young children and their families by identifying baseline data to inform public awareness and prevention education efforts. These data were designed to be presented as an ACES and resilience “dashboard”. The product or outcomes provided a list of data sources and a list of indicators/measures to use in conjunction with the Frame Works Institute violence prevention communication campaign.

The campaign utilized CBCAP funds blended with DHS monies to establish a contract with Frameworks Institute to develop an innovative campaign to build awareness of all forms of family violence – including child abuse and neglect and intimate partner violence. The integration of these issues represents an important effort in reframing. Typically, advocates and service providers focus on either children or adults – a divide that is then reflected in the communication campaign. One result is families, professionals, policy member and the public may not understand how these issues are connected and what steps communities, institutions, programs, or families might take to resolve them in an integrated fashion. This activity is a major initiative sponsored by the ECAS Team 2 co-chaired by the SVP, CBCAP, and DHS.

Several messaging campaigns supporting safe and nurturing families are underway in Hawaii.

These are: the ECAS Team 2 Frameworks Institute work, HCAN leadership, and ECAS Collaborative Leaders Network. Agreement was reached by this triad to support, align and leverage resources, as appropriate, for their specific messaging initiatives. The following describes the work of each triad.

Team 2 Safe and NurturingFamilies Framework targets families with young children but is designed to be adapted for families with older age children as well. Overall goal of Team 2 initiative is to decrease family violence and neglect through positive serve and return strategies between adults in the home and between adults and children in the home.

HCAN is sponsoring the Little Minds Matter initiative that is based on the premise that parents are a child’s first and best teachers. It targets families with children birth to 5 who are not currently in an early learning program, to enhance parents’ skills as first teachers by providing a range of resources and serves as a referral mechanism to available programs. The focus is on brain development and how young children learn. General themes of the initiative are literacy, “serve/return”, and executive functioning.

Words Matter goal is to strengthen early language development and attachment in families with young children through increasing the number of positive words a young child hears through reading, storytelling and singing. It is currently being piloted through several programs. The activity has a toolkit with books (with and without words, and local and national stories), song lyrics, refrigerator magnet with tips on increasing words throughout the day during daily routines, and a word counter that counts the number of words the young child hears from human voices and radio/tv.

The graphic below depicts the relationship across these three initiatives, where Team 2 Safe and Nurturing Families framework serves as the overarching frame, Little Minds Matter would provide a more concentrated message, and intentional referral to Words Matter.

Next steps for partnering on messaging are aligning objectives and branding and determining how to dovetail and maximize resources and work.

Community Partners for Child Safety (CPCS)

In 2005 Indiana established a statewide secondary prevention initiative to prevent child abuse and neglect in addition to the long-standing home visiting program Healthy Families Indiana which has a specific target population. The initiative is Community Partners for Child Safety (CPCS) and is the main recipient of the CBCAP funds.

This service continuum builds community support for families, identified through self-referral or other community agency referrals, to connect families to resources needed to strengthen the family unit and prevent child abuse and neglect. To date, CPCS provides services statewide through contracts with regional service providers (see www.in.gov/dcs/files/CommunityPartnersProvidersMap.pdf). Indiana’s new funding system began in 2008 with child welfare funds disbursed at the state level and 18 newly created Regional Services Councils making the local decisions regarding their programs and funding needs with input from consumer families. The Regional Service Councils were given a Legislative mandate to make funding recommendations, for their regions, with the support of the DCS central office for the purpose of funding a statewide prevention effort, Community Partners for Child Safety. DCS continues to leave some allocations to the discretion of the local offices with approval of the Regional Services Councils. Local DCS leadership works closely with local community leaders and contracted service providers through the Regional Service Councils to identify primary and secondary prevention needs and services in the local communities to ensure the continuum of prevention services.

The purpose of this CPCS service is to develop a child abuse prevention service array that can be delivered in every region of the state. It is intended, through the delivery of these prevention services, a referral to/investigation by Child Protective Services will not be necessary. Community providers who refer to CPCS include, but are not limited to: social services agencies, local DCS offices, Health Families Indiana, Prevent Child Abuse Indiana chapters, Youth Services Bureaus, Child Advocacy Centers, the faith-based community, local school systems, and Recovery Support Programs. This program is funded through several sources including CBCAP, Kids First Trust Fund, State appropriation, and the Family and Children (state) Fund. Indiana’s CBCAP program, Community Partners for Child Safety (CPCS), had a budget of $21,896,283.02 in Fiscal Year 2018 providing community-based child abuse and neglect prevention throughout the state. While some families may benefit from an evidence-based clinical intervention, many families benefit from a temporary boost, someone to listen and provide good counsel, or very basic concrete supports such as help paying rent or a security deposit for housing, child care, transportation, legal services, or brief periods of respite care to allow parents time to seek help and work through a challenging situation. These types of services and supports coupled with efforts to enhance parenting skills, promote healthy child development, and build and maintain positive peer and relational support networks, before crises arise, are all critical primary prevention efforts that CPCS provides to help prevent bad things from happening in the lives of children and parents.

Children’s Trust leads the role in South Carolina to prevent child abuse, neglect, and injury as the only statewide intermediary organization focused on prevention. This is done through effective programs, high-quality data and trend analysis, well-founded policy that champions strong families and empowered communities, partnerships at the state and local levels, and training that offers child-serving professionals learning opportunities and the tools they need to help children and families in counties across the state.

During 2018, Children’s Trust furthered expansion of prevention programming to help build safe, stable and nurturing environments for children by developing the design of a cross-sector prevention framework for local communities called Empower Action, continuing the use of South Carolina ACE data to inform and guide prevention work, and advocated for legislative initiatives that advance the health, safety and economic capacity of the state’s families, all while building upon internal race, equity and inclusion work to ensure all of South Carolina’s people and families are supported.

One community-based collaborative approach funded in part through CBCAP is The South Carolina Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Initiative. It is a public and private partnership that supports and promotes prevention efforts that keep children safe. ACEs have a significant impact on adult health, social and economic outcomes and South Carolina has consistently ranked at the bottom on indicators of child well-being compared to other states. The South Carolina ACE initiative includes four main components: training, data collection and dissemination, community-based efforts and a legislative agenda. Through the empowerment of communities, the South Carolina ACE Initiative helps children and families overcome the effects of traumatic experiences, prevent poor health outcomes and promote well-being later in life.

As a part of its statewide ACE initiative, South Carolina Children’s Trust focused on educating thousands of child-and family-serving professionals on the impact of adversity across the lifespan. As a result of these efforts, the organization has identified a need for next steps, or the “now what?” to help communities that are interested in preventing ACEs and the negative impact of ACEs.

Through an environmental scan and evaluative feedback from key stakeholders, Children’s Trust identified a need for a model that focuses on action for child well-being and the prevention of ACEs. The Empower Action Model merges important frameworks within key areas of public health and community psychology – the socio-ecological model, protective factors, the life course perspective, and race equity and inclusion with actionable items to build resilience for all families and address determinants of equity. The tool is centered around the principles of understanding, support, resilience, inclusion, connection and growth at each level of the socio-ecological model. It provides concrete examples developed for application of each of these principles in a checklist format. This model can assess the needs and readiness of communities, creating a plan for building partnerships and collaborations and identify areas of opportunity for growth and development, as well as building a plan for addressing these needs. The Empower Action Model can be applied to various organizations within a coalition or a coalition. See graphic below.

This model aims to provide clear and attainable steps to prevent ACEs and promote well-being for all individuals through the intentional building of protective factors. The local partner coalitions apply the Empower Action Model to work at all levels of the model through a cross-sector approach to develop action plans that are most useful and relevant to their respective populations. This work includes both county- contextual and broadly-based recommendations for organizational and public policies that support families. Children’s Trust provides facilitation support and technical assistance and measures the process and outcomes associated with the implementation of this model to develop best practices for promoting health and well-being through coalitions.

Although each community determines their own goals based on community need, three commitments are consistent across all community prevention coalitions:

• Use funding to contract with an identified facilitator and develop a sustainable long-range plan to address the prevention of child maltreatment and promotion of child and family well-being, specific to the needs of their community;
• Partner closely with the Parent Advisory Council in their community through inclusion in coalition, co-planning and continuous communication.
• Use funding to meet regularly with community stakeholders to create and accomplish plans for addressing the prevention of child maltreatment and promotion of child and family well-being.

South Carolina is currently working with 3 communities to implement the Empower Action Model. One of the projects is described below:

Resilient Richland

Resilient Richland is a county-wide initiative to prevent and mitigate the effects of childhood trauma. Resilient Richland is working to increase awareness of the resources, tools, and services that help prevent ACEs from happening in the first place – and help to identify if an ACE is happening in a child’s home. The initiative has a community-wide awareness campaign that highlights the social and economic impacts ACEs has on Richland County by providing a series of training opportunities to community members on how they can help. Resilient Richland is a partnership between the United Way of the Midlands, Children’s Trust of South Carolina and the Nord Family Foundation. The coalition includes over 40 Richland area organizations. The Children’s Trust is providing content expertise, training, and coalition support to help move the work forward, using CBCAP funds and matching support from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation. Resilient Richland is using Children’s Trust’s Empower Action Model to help frame their action plans for building community resilience.
For additional information, click here to download the research brief.

The Wyoming Children’s Trust Fund (WYCTF) is the lead agency for the CBCAP funds. WYCTF is focused on several priority areas including community outreach, training, and capacity building at the local level. In an effort to become a leader in prevention for the state of Wyoming, there has been a significant investment in collaborating with different entities around the state who share the same vision for children and families.

WYCTF engaged in a comprehensive needs assessment/mapping project of all Wyoming counties to determine services and barriers to services for children and families. In 2018, WYCTF in partnership with Magellan Health, Wyoming Citizen Review Panel, Wyoming 2-1-1, Wyoming Kids First, and Wyoming Parent Information Center conducted and completed community cafés across all Wyoming counties. Upon completion, WYCTF worked with the School of Social Work at the University of Wyoming to assist with data analysis and reporting. The following information was shared, and five barriers were identified. These include:

1. Access to mental health and substance abuse treatment which included long wait times, lack of specialization, affordability and availability of services.
2. Access to affordable childcare services which included availability (particularly infant care), affordability, quality services, and after hours’ services (non-traditional times for shift workers).
3. Access to affordable housing which included availability, options for individuals with felony convictions, and sober living options.
4. Access to reliable transportation services which included after-hours and weekends, transportation to near-by communities for services, and affordability.
5. Lack of knowledge of available community resources. This was presented as a concern from both the parents and the local professionals.

Based on the information that was ascertained during the Community Cafés, WYCTF is planning a second grant opportunity to the Child Protection Teams (CPT) across Wyoming. CPTs are multidisciplinary groups that focus on high risk families and community services. Each county team functions independent and develops their own approach to prevention and child welfare. The grant offers each county an opportunity to establish a prevention plan unique to their needs that utilizes the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to guide the process. The grantees will be expected to address one of the five commonly identified issues across the state, as well as any other unique needs of the county. Each plan must incorporate at least two of the Protective Factors while utilizing an evidence-based/evidence-informed model.