Watch: Funding Evidence-Based Programs in Child Welfare With the Family First Act

A webi­nar spon­sored by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and the William T. Grant Foun­da­tion — now avail­able via record­ing — pro­vides an overview of avail­able fund­ing streams for imple­ment­ing and sus­tain­ing evi­dence-based pro­grams in child wel­fare, with a spe­cial empha­sis on the fed­er­al Fam­i­ly First Pre­ven­tion Ser­vices Act.

Watch the webinar

Fund­ing Evi­dence-Based Pro­grams in Child Wel­fare: Impli­ca­tions of the Fam­i­ly First Pre­ven­tion Ser­vices Act is the sec­ond install­ment in the four-part webi­nar series Lead­ing With Evi­dence: Inform­ing Prac­tice With Research. The hour­long pre­sen­ta­tion, record­ed on June 21, 2018, begins with an expla­na­tion of the Fam­i­ly First Act, recent fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion that could have an enor­mous impact on the preva­lence of fos­ter care pre­ven­tion and fam­i­ly preser­va­tion ser­vices. The law expands cov­er­age to sup­port inter­ven­tions much ear­li­er in the child wel­fare process and pri­or­i­tizes evi­dence-based programs.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, fos­ter care fund­ing was nine to 10 times greater than those for pre­ven­tion and fam­i­ly preser­va­tion ser­vices com­bined,” says pre­sen­ter Mar­garet Fly­nn-Khan, a part­ner at Main­spring Con­sult­ing. ​“Fam­i­ly First does many things that aim to shift the bal­ance of fund­ing and incen­tives toward keep­ing chil­dren and youth with their fam­i­lies or — if they can’t stay safe­ly with their fam­i­lies — in a fam­i­ly-based placement.”

Pan­elists look at the cur­rent fund­ing land­scape for evi­dence-based child wel­fare ser­vices, high­light­ing a Casey Foun­da­tion brief fea­tur­ing eight strate­gies child wel­fare sys­tems have used to fund imple­men­ta­tion of evi­dence-based pro­grams. The webi­nar also presents a case study from North Carolina’s near­ly 15-year path to pro­gram sus­tain­abil­i­ty — includ­ing how the state has allo­cat­ed increas­ing resources over time to help­ing fam­i­lies stay together.

Mod­er­a­tor Suzanne Barnard, direc­tor of Casey’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group, was joined by the fol­low­ing experts in the child wel­fare field:

• Mar­garet Flynn-Kahn
  Part­ner at Main­spring Con­sult­ing, an orga­ni­za­tion that works nation­al­ly with foun­da­tions, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and non­prof­its to design effec­tive invest­ments for fam­i­lies and chil­dren and think through how to finance and sus­tain services
   
• Kristin O’Connor
  Sec­tion chief of pol­i­cy and pro­grams in the child wel­fare ser­vices sec­tion of the North Car­oli­na Divi­sion of Social Ser­vices, one of the state lead­ers fea­tured in the Foun­da­tion brief

Lead­ing With Evi­dence Webi­nar Series

The Lead­ing With Evi­dence webi­nar series focus­es on imple­ment­ing evi­dence-based prac­tices in child wel­fare. The series stems from Lead­ing With Evi­dence con­fer­ences in 2016 and 2017 that brought togeth­er child wel­fare lead­ers, researchers and pro­gram devel­op­ers to study and advance the use of research and evi­dence in the child wel­fare field.

Relat­ed reading:
A Fam­i­ly First Q & A: Apply for Fed­er­al Kin­ship Funds by July 20