COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS & LINKAGES: REACHING OUT TO WORK TOGETHER — HANDOUT AND TRANSPARENCY 1.1
Community collaboratives in child welfare have developed to respond to families by providing:
- Supports to prevent child maltreatment or its reoccurrence.
- A range of informal and formal services that work together to share responsibility.
- Individualized responses to families' strengths and needs.
Prevention is the soul of permanency. The current child welfare system emphasizes identifying child maltreatment and holding parents and other caregivers responsible. But what families also need is a focus on prevention, including supports and services that help prevent maltreatment or its reoccurrence. Children need services that will help prevent them from growing up to be abusers themselves.
No one sector or agency can respond to the multiple needs of families in the child welfare system. Instead, every sector of society plays an important role and has the responsibility to prevent child maltreatment and/or to deal with the consequences when abuse has occurred. The shared responsibility can be expressed through collaborative partnerships to respond to families' strengths and needs.
Families may enter the child welfare system for a wide range of reasons—from children going to school with inadequate clothing to life-threatening neglect and long-term sexual abuse. In addition, families that enter the system may be confronting a variety of other challenges such as unemployment, substance abuse, and mental illness. Each one of these families needs an individualized plan that responds to their needs. For example:
- Services for children and families are coordinated around each family's situation.
- Supports and services supplement the family's strengths to protect the safety of children.
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Out-of-home placements preserve important relationships while
protecting the safety of children.
Handout
& Transparency 1.1