Child Welfare
Ensuring children and their families have the supports, opportunities, and resources they need to thrive is the cornerstone of CSSP’s child welfare work. It’s about making sure children – particularly those involved in child welfare systems across the country – are safe, have a permanent family connection and are supported socially and emotionally for healthy development.
Guiding this work is a philosophy that recognizes that while government has a critical role in keeping children safe, it requires partnerships with the community, parents and youth it serves in order to address the complicated needs of families.
Currently CSSP’s child welfare system reform work includes:
- Direct consultation with states and localities on changing practices, financing reform, strategic planning and building community partnerships
- Promoting effective reform through monitoring, mediation and technical assistance in jurisdictions under court oversight as a result of class action litigation to improve child welfare system performance and outcomes
- Developing new initiatives, including research, identifying best practices and working with selected jurisdictions to promote child well-being for youth in foster care by focusing on youth’s developmental needs and the protective factors to support positive youth development
- Identifying policies, practices and protocols for ensuring that families involved in the child welfare system are connected to the range of economic supports that promote their economic stability
- Promoting racial equity in child welfare systems by using tools to better understand the organizational and structural contributors to racial disparities
- Developing recommendations to guide qualitative case-based reviews as part of state and county child welfare quality assurance systems
FEATURED RESOURCE:
Allied for Better Outcomes: Child Welfare and Early Childhood is a paper that proposes an approach to child welfare practice that responds to the urgent needs of the youngest and most vulnerable group of children.