Skip to main content

Advocacy

Explore more Advocacy topics

Advocacy

Bridging the Divide between Child Welfare and Home Visiting Systems to Address the Needs of Pregnant and Parenting Youth in Care

Article February 21, 2025

This article presents findings from an implementation study of a pilot project that connected pregnant and parenting youth in care with home visiting services. It draws primarily on semistructured interviews conducted with the practitioners who delivered those services and the parents who received them. We find that home visiting services can be delivered successfully to pregnant and parenting youth in care and that both practitioners and parents reported that parents benefit from those services. We also find that engaging and delivering services to pregnant and parenting youth in care presents substantial challenges and that home visiting programs sometimes deviated from their standard practices in response. The study has implications for future efforts to provide home visiting services to pregnant and parenting youth in care or to other families involved in the child welfare system.

Dear Child Welfare Colleague Letter from ACF

Report February 21, 2025

The Children's Bureau (CB) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is committed to fostering a child welfare system that is focused on supporting families. The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) and its title IV-E prevention program provides a watershed opportunity to create more equitable outcomes for children, youth, and families before they face the tumult and devastating consequences of maltreatment and separation. The ACF has worked diligently to support jurisdictions as they develop, submit, revise, and implement prevention plans, and we are continuously examining how to streamline processes and improve supports. This letter includes resources to aid jurisdictions as they develop their plans, including links to prevention plans that have been approved, sample program plans, resources for tribes, and responses to policy questions.

Accelerating the Expansion of Home Visiting Services Under the Family First Prevention Services Act

Report February 21, 2025

The Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 (Family First) was intended to redirect a portion of federal child welfare funding to early intervention and prevention. Six years later, multiple barriers still stand in the way of expanding families’ access to support services such as voluntary home visiting. Key challenges include building cross-agency agreements, navigating administrative practices, and aligning funding streams. The goal of this paper is to expedite the expansion of home visiting services under Family First by elevating strategies developed by states to address financing system misalignment between child welfare and home visiting. In many cases, use of Family First resources to support home visiting requires braiding funds to cover start-up costs, adapting child welfare vendor contracts and payment approaches to account for variability in services and cover the full cost of providing home visits, and collaboration between agencies that may not be accustomed to communicating with each other and working together. We hope this paper enables additional states to expand home visiting more rapidly to more families, promoting safer, happier, and healthier lives together

Home Visiting and Child Welfare: From Policy to Nuts and Bolts

Video February 19, 2025

This recording, slide deck, and additional resources are from the fourth webinar in the "Moving Away from Family Separation: Cross-systems Strategies to Support Young Children and Families at Risk of Child Welfare Involvement" webinar series.

Improving Outcomes for Children in the Child Welfare System: Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation is Key

Blog January 27, 2025

Since 2020, BUILD Initiative has explored how the child welfare and early childhood systems – including all child-and-family serving systems -- can align and work together to achieve better outcomes for children and families. According to Dr. Cynthia Tate, who leads the project, several states are developing promising programs, policies, and strategies that can provide inspiration for other states.

From Barriers to Opportunity: Confronting Systemic Barriers to Early Childhood and Poverty-Reduction Programs

Report December 12, 2024

This report from EdTrust-New York highlights a crisis in childcare availability, with more than 60% of New York classified as a childcare desert. Recent improvements to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) have not significantly increased accessibility, as families still encounter complex application processes and stringent eligibility requirements. Many parents struggle to find available slots or are unaware of available programs altogether.