Child Welfare and Early Childhood

Dr. Cynthia Tate, BUILD’s Director of Child Welfare and Cross-systems Collaboration, and Professor Dorothy Roberts discuss what works in Child Welfare.

How BUILD Provides Support

BUILD partners with state leaders, advocates, families, and communities to strengthen collaboration between early childhood and child welfare systems so that children can access the support they need as early as possible. Our work is grounded in the belief that equity and quality cannot flourish in siloed systems.

We recognize that both systems face deep challenges, including underfunding, workforce shortages, racial inequities, and policies that often fail to reflect the strengths and needs of communities. Black, Indigenous, and other families of color are disproportionately impacted by these inequities, particularly in child welfare systems where poverty is too often mistaken for neglect.

BUILD’s approach centers:

• Cross-system collaboration and shared leadership
• Family and community voice
• Prevention and family support
• Racial equity and systems change
• Peer learning and relationship building across sectors

Since 2020, BUILD has convened state and national leaders through interviews, webinars, learning communities, and thought leader summits to explore how child welfare and early childhood systems can better align. This work has highlighted promising strategies such as navigator programs, home visiting partnerships, and Plans of Safe Care that help connect families to meaningful supports earlier and more effectively.

A Facilitated Peer Learning Team, launched in May 2026, brings together 14 teams of state and local child welfare and early learning leaders from eight states, alongside national systems change experts and policy and research partners, for a six-month intensive learning experience. Through monthly convenings, participants will strengthen cross-system collaboration, examine proven models, and develop actionable practices, policies, and program improvements to advance their work.

BUILD is helping states move beyond fragmented systems toward coordinated approaches that strengthen families, reduce trauma, and improve outcomes for young children. We believe lasting change happens when leaders across systems learn together, build trust, and work in partnership with families and communities.

BUILD believes:

• Family support should come before family separation whenever possible.
• Poverty should not be treated as neglect.
• Strong relationships between systems lead to stronger outcomes for children.
• Communities and families closest to the challenges must help shape the solutions.
• Lasting systems change requires courageous leadership, collaboration, and sustained investment.

By bringing leaders together across sectors, BUILD works to create more equitable, responsive, and connected systems where all young children and families can thrive.

From Family Separation to Family Support: Early Childhood and Child Welfare Collaboration

An internationally recognized legal scholar and sociologist, Professor Dorothy Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of race, gender, and class inequities in US institutions. She has been a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics. Her book, Torn Apart, exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change. In a conversation with Dr. Cynthia Tate, who leads BUILD’s work on the collaboration between the child welfare and early childhood systems, Professor Roberts explores the historical and policy pathways that have led to today’s disparities, shares why she feels that, too often, poverty is misinterpreted as neglect, with harmful results for Black, Brown, and Indigenous families, and offers ways that all of us can take action to build a caring society that supports children and families.