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Engaging Communities
Communities can serve as powerful partners in preventing child and abuse and neglect, and in supporting families at the front end of child welfare. Engaging communities to support families expands the available resources for all and fosters a sense of collective responsibility for the well-being of children. Moreover, engaging with communities creates opportunities to address the broader issues that put families at risk.
Featured Resources
Digital Dialogue
Birth Parent Foster Caregiver Partnerships
Family systems theory gives us a framework for understanding, supporting, or engaging in birth parent foster parent partnerships while acknowledging the complexity and the relational work they require.
Building Community, Building Hope
Relationships Matter: Strengthening and Supporting Families
This film explores the layers of trust and relationship that need to be in place for primary prevention to work and features San Francisco-based family resource center Safe & Sound and the families they serve.
Training Video Series
Preventing Child Neglect Training Series
The Preventing Child Neglect training series raises public awareness and understanding of child maltreatment, its causes, protective factors that help shield children and families, and manageable steps that each of us can take to help reduce the likelihood of child neglect.
Complete List of Resources
Videos and Social Media
- WE CAN
WE CAN social media kit offers simple, positive messages to support families. Each post links to useful resources and tools to help individuals take action. - What if…?
This short film imagines a new approach to child welfare. - Relationships Matter: Strengthening and Supporting Families
Highlights how creating a community-based network built on strong relationships can truly transform lives. - Fostering Hope Initiative
“It takes a village.” It’s in an old idea, but in Oregon, it's tangibly changing community supports for families. - Magnolia Community Initiative
Could 35,000 low-income children in Los Angeles break records of success in education, health & economic stability? - Partners United for Supportive Housing
How does it change the game when you provide stable housing to families first, then address their other complex needs? - Building Community, Building Hope
The full-length film profiles three programs engaging communities to prevent child abuse and neglect. Start the conversation in your community about what you can do to support families.
Practice Tools and Briefs
- WE CAN Adaptation Toolkit
Get guidance for adapting our WE CAN graphics for your own campaigns. - Preventing Child Neglect Training Series
The Preventing Child Neglect training series raises public awareness and understanding of child maltreatment, its causes, protective factors that help shield children and families, and manageable steps that each of us can take to help reduce the likelihood of child neglect. - From the Field: Engaging Business and Other Partners in Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Approaches [PDF]
Connect to resources, get a framework for engaging businesses, and hear from those on the ground. - Identifying Developmental Disabilities and Delays in Young Children: The Role of Child Welfare Practitioners and Partners
Learn the importance of early identification of developmental disabilities and delays and how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” resources and tools can support early identification and intervention.
Digital Dialogue Recordings
- NEWBirth Parent Foster Caregiver Partnerships: Taking a Family Systems Perspective
Family systems theory gives us a framework for understanding, supporting, or engaging in birth parent foster parent partnerships while acknowledging the complexity and the relational work they require. - There’s no Place like Home: Youth Acceptance Project
The Youth Acceptance Project uses a trauma-informed psycho-educational model to address the misinformation, resistance, fear, and grief with which families often struggle, reducing the time that children spend in foster care, reuniting children with their families and, in many cases, preventing separation in the first place. - Engaging Parents Around Newly Approved Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccines and Building Vaccine Confidence
Hear more about the why and how of vaccinating children against COVID-19, and learn about new tools and resources that will help you engage parents in this important conversation. - Making it Add Up: Using a Common Framework to Aggregate Impact Across Prevention Programs
This dialogue highlights the experiences of a successful State Agency-University-Community partnership focused on documenting and evaluating 140+ diverse, community-based child abuse and neglect prevention programs across Alabama. - Getting to the Problem Behind the Symptom: A Unique Primary Prevention Collaboration Between Child Welfare and Education
Learn more about how child welfare and education departments in Kentucky are collaborating to prevent child abuse and neglect by focusing on chronic truancy. - Engaging Business and Other Partners in Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Approaches
Learn the importance of partnering with the business community in cross-sector networks for preventing early adversity. - Meaningful Parent Partnerships and What They Can Do for You
Learn how staff can build and sustain authentic relationships with parents as partners in helping to transform systems to strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect.
External Resources
Partners
- FRIENDS National Resource Center
FRIENDS National Resource Center
FRIENDS provides resources, training, and tools for community-based child abuse prevention efforts. - Engaging Communities to Support Families
The Child Welfare Information Gateway
Resources address how to engage community members to support children, youth, and families, including State and local examples. - Head Start Programs and Child Welfare Partnerships
National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement
This resource offers guiding questions and action steps for building effective, engaged, collaborative relationships between Head Start programs and child welfare.
