Protective Factors Framework

A framework for prevention focuses not only on identifying protective factors but also on better understanding how those factors may contribute to or explain positive outcomes for children, families, and communities. The following resources offer examples of a protective factors framework around child welfare systems. They also provide examples of other frameworks from related fields, such as mental health and human development, which may aid in the development of a framework that can be used across programs and disciplines.

Protective Factors Framework in Child Welfare Systems

Child Welfare—Early Education Partnerships to Expand Protective Factors for Children with Child Welfare Involvement
Child Information Gateway (2015)
Summarizes key activities of agencies seeking to maximize the identification, enrollment, attendance, and supports for children in foster care or under the supervision of child welfare services, aged 0 to 5, into comprehensive high-quality early care and education services. This resource provides summary information and connects to the final evaluation reports of each individual programs.

Infusing Protective Factors for Children in Foster Care
Griffin, McEwen, Samuels, Suggs, Redd, & McClelland
Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 34(1), 2011
Reviews research on the relationship between risk behaviors and protective factors of traumatized youth, looks at adapting treatment and evidence-based early intervention practices to local child welfare settings, and presents a review of how State and local plans have been influenced by Federal policies. The article includes a case study from Illinois.

Progress Toward a Prevention Perspective (PDF - 145 KB)
Stagner & Lansing (2009)
Future of Children, 19(2)
Proposes investment-prevention as a new framework for preventing child abuse and neglect that focuses on strengthening protective factors and building family and social networks to reinforce the ability of parents to care for their children.

Protective Factors Framework in Related Fields

A Life Course Approach Resource Guide
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health
Identifies how the interplay of risk and protective factors such as socioeconomic status, toxic environmental exposures, health behaviors, stress, and nutrition influence health throughout a lifetime. This website provides webinars, policy briefs, factsheets, lectures, toolkits, and more to foster partnerships to improve individuals' and families' health and well-being.

Preventing Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Against Women: Taking Action and Generating Evidence
World Health Organization (2010)
Provides a framework for analyzing risk and protective factors of intimate partner and sexual violence as well as for developing programs and policies for prevention. Chapter three discusses the implementation of prevention strategies to mitigate violent perpetration and victimization throughout the life course.

Strengthening Families
Center for the Study of Social Policy (2016)
Describes the Strengthening Families Initiative, a national resource focused on helping families, programs, and communities create and maintain five key protective factors. State profiles detail the Strengthening Families implementation efforts on a State level.

The Strengthening Families Approach and Protective Factors Framework: Branching Out and Reaching Deeper (PDF - 1,116 KB)
Browne (2014)
Center for the Study of Social Policy
Provides a synthesis of the ideas and research from the neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences that further inform the evidence base of the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) Strengthening Families Approach and Protective Factors Framework. This synthesis reflects CSSP’s theory of change, which supports the need to work in all domains of the social ecology—individual, familial and relational, community, societal, and policy—in order to make a difference in the lives of families and children.