Because families at risk of child abuse or neglect often face challenges in other areas of their lives, effective collaboration with other service providers and systems is essential to supporting families' many unique needs. Common systems with which child abuse prevention professionals may need to collaborate include early childhood, substance abuse, and domestic violence systems.
The following resources address forming effective partnerships across systems to prevent child abuse and neglect, including State and local examples.
Creating and Maintaining Coalitions and Partnerships
University of Kansas Community Tool Box
Offers a framework and supports for creating coalitions or collaborative partnerships.
Creating and Sustaining Cross-System Collaboration to Support Families in Child Welfare with Co-Occurring Issues: An Administrator's Handbook (PDF - 1,481 KB)
Capacity Building Center for States (2017)
Provides information relevant to using collaborative practices and models across human service systems in order to better serve families in contact with child welfare who are dealing with co-occurring issues. The handbook defines co-occurring issues and challenges families in child welfare might face in gaining access to individualized services.
Prevention Planning Toolkit
Child Abuse and Neglect Technical Assistance and Strategic Dissemination Center (CANTASD)
Provides digital dialogues and a toolkit that use the prevention planning framework CANTASD developed in partnership with Chapin Hall. These resources are used nationwide in both State and local prevention planning efforts and can be tailored for local needs and priorities.
Rebuilding Communities Initiative
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Seeks to establish effective neighborhood collaborations and demonstrate that troubled, low-income communities can become safe, supportive environments where children and families can thrive.
State and local examples
Hampton Healthy Families Partnership
Hampton (VA) Healthy Families Partnership is a team effort in which city and community agencies have joined together with public and private organizations such as hospitals, restaurants, businesses, and banks to help families become healthy, happy, and self-sufficient. Through home visitation, parenting classes, newsletters, library resource centers, and a variety of other programs, the Partnership works to ensure that every child in Hampton is born healthy and enters school ready to learn.
Site Visit Report: State of Connecticut Department of Children and Families-Early Head Start Partnership, Early Childhood Child Welfare Collaboration Project (PDF - 128 KB)
U.S. Children's Bureau (2014)
Explores a collaborative effort among the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, Head Start, and partner programs/organizations that provides staff training to enhance services and case management for families and builds collaborations to help ensure that children in foster care, ages birth to 5, are referred for quality early childhood services to meet developmental milestones and education-related performance markers.