The number of children who are victims of maltreatment in the United States fell for five years in a row, from 2016 to 2021, according to a report released by the Children’s Bureau (CB) at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in 2023. And, while that is good news, that still means an estimated 600,000 of approximately 3 million children the agency supported in the United States were victims of abuse and neglect in 2021.
Many experts believe shifting the focus from responding to child maltreatment to preventing it is the key. Another is having government and community-based organizations working together on those prevention efforts. Preliminary research shows that when these organizations work together, better outcomes are achieved for children and their parents, costly interventions are avoided, and work-related hazards for those working with these families are reduced. Despite the benefits, there is little research to support the widespread implementation of best practices for these collaborations.
To change that, in 2018 the CB created the Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families initiative (referred to here as Child Welfare Community Collaborations, or CWCC). CWCC is designed to mobilize communities to develop and evaluate multi-system collaboratives that address local barriers and provide a continuum of services to prevent child abuse and neglect. In 2018 and 2019, CB awarded five-year cooperative agreements to a total of 13 states, non-profit organizations, and Native American tribal organizations (grantees). CB and the ACF Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation also partnered with Abt and Child Trends to (1) provide grantees with technical assistance to help them evaluate their collaborations in real time and (2) conduct a cross-site evaluation of the CWCC initiative overall. The team’s work includes collecting, synthesizing, and sharing lessons learned from grantees and their partners.
The evaluation team began in 2018 by developing a set of research questions and identifying the quantitative and qualitative data that would be needed to answer each one. The questions focused on best practices for creating and maintaining partnerships, how data are used and shared across agencies, how grant activities are organized, what factors promote or impede collaboration, and how grantees will maintain their efforts beyond the grant period. As the evaluation team was collecting data from all CWCC grantees and their partners for the cross-site evaluation, the TA team guided individual CWCC grantees through the development and implementation of rigorous, independent evaluations of their projects.
From interviews with CWCC grantees and their partners, the evaluation team identified several factors that were critical to forming productive partnerships. They identified both external and internal factors that influence grantees and their partners’ perceptions of their own success. For example, some external factors included partners’ organizational capacity (e.g., time, resources) and the level of mutual trust among partners, while some internal factors included strong leadership and frequent, clear communication. Overall, grantees and their partners reported being very satisfied with their collaborations.
The CWCC initiative was a key part of CB’s prevention efforts and its Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) in 2018 and 2019 included requirements designed to advance equity. As such, all CWCC grantees’ project designs incorporated principles of equity in some way. The evaluation team identified several key strategies grantees use to promote equity:
- Engaging community members and individuals with lived experience
- Promoting more equitable access to services (such as reducing language barriers)
- Embedding equity as a guiding principle (such as investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion training for staff)
- Working to rebuild trust with community members
- Using data to drive identify needs and allocate resources.
Ultimately, the evidence generated through this work will be among the first of its kind, informing the field of child welfare about the benefits of community collaborations in prevention efforts. The work may also serve as the basis for collaborations across the country that could further reduce child abuse and neglect in this country.