Kentucky is now in its third year as a participating site team of the Thriving Families, Safer Children (TFSC) national commitment to child, youth, and family well-being. The vision of the movement is a world in which all children, youth, and families live in just and equitable communities with the supports, opportunities, and resources they need to thrive and remain free of unnecessary child welfare system involvement.
Read on for an update on some of the statewide initiatives supporting our TFSC Kentucky-specific priorities:
Statewide and Regional Prevention Collaboratives
Through our statewide and regional primary and secondary child abuse and neglect prevention plans, we brought together community leaders and advocates to develop and execute strategies for statewide and community-led efforts on child and family wellbeing and actively engage them in strengthening conditions for families to thrive before coming to the attention of the child welfare agency. The statewide plan was finalized in December of 2022. The statewide collaborative is currently providing feedback on the Theory of Change being developed by Chapin Hall alongside the Department for Community Based Services’ (DCBS) new Division of Prevention and Community Well-Being. A full update on the regional work can be found here.
Truth and Reconciliation: Truth Telling Circles
This initiative is a collaboration that seeks to highlight and decrease the disproportionality of Black/African-American youth in the Louisville foster care system through the sharing of testimonies, at truth telling circles, that describe post-traumatic growth from foster care experiences. The current partners who are co-designing this work are Kentucky Youth Advocates/True Up, foster care alumni, University of Louisville, community partners, and staff from the Kempe Center. Over the past year, several new advocates participated in truth telling circles, existing partners continued to attend action planning meetings, and four alumni were present at the Prevent Child Abuse America national conference.
Throughout the remainder of the year, truth telling circles and community partner meetings will continue to occur and a community charrette will be conducted. Currently, the focus areas are solidifying top recommendations for positive changes and providing peer-to-peer professional development training to youth and young adults.
Community Response Pilots
Community Response is delivered through community-based agencies, specifically Family and Youth Resource Service Centers (FRYSCs), Brighton Center, and Gateway Children’s Services. It began with four counties in July 2022 to serve families who may benefit from additional support when a report is called into DCBS that does not meet the statutory criteria for an investigation but does meet the criteria for community response.
This model involves delivering assessment and/or services such as parent skill building, meeting concrete needs, and providing housing and transportation. It is now being delivered in 10 counties including: Perry, Bath, Montgomery, Rowan, Boone, Campbell, Kenton, Clark, Powell, and Barren, and five DCBS service regions: Eastern Mountain, Northeastern, Southern Bluegrass, Northern Bluegrass, and Two Rivers. The goals are to strengthen families, prevent child abuse and neglect, and reduce child welfare involvement. A program evaluation through the Office of Data Analytics is occurring for the original four counties: Barren, Perry, Clark and Montgomery.
Alternative Response
DCBS began consulting with The Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect in July 2022 to develop an Alternative Response Model that will respond to low-to-moderate risk reports of child abuse and neglect that meet statutory acceptance criteria as determined by centralized intake.
Alternative Response is a family-centered, strengths-based approach to working with families to assist them in navigating community resources and local supports while addressing child safety in the home. The DCBS Northeastern service region is the first region to implement Alternative Response on September 18, 2023. The Two Rivers DCBS service region will begin accepting Alternative Response reports in mid-October 2023. Additional regions will be selected for implementation, which will continue throughout 2024 until Alternative Response is a statewide response.
KY SEAT
The statewide parent advisory council celebrated one year of operation over the summer of 2023. It is continuing to grow with mother and father advocates across Kentucky. KY SEAT council members have been partnering with DCBS to include parent voice in child welfare decisions affecting families and dispel long-standing harmful myths about parental capacity and motivation. They are currently preparing to share legislative priorities for change with policymakers.
Lean on Me Kentucky
Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky (PCAK) launched the Lean on Me KY in March 2023. This campaign is an effort to shift the cultural mindset to foster a community of support, where every Kentuckian views themselves as an active participant in lifting up their neighbor, connecting others to resources, understanding that socioeconomic status does not equal abuse, and offering a helping hand as a first step in the prevention of child abuse whenever safely possible. PCAK is currently working on infographics and analytics to show Lean on Me’s reach in addition to collecting concrete examples of people using Lean on Me, such as being a community supporter. They are also working with UoL to measure behavioral anchors after receiving Lean on Me training and creating a tool to help people conceptualize being a community supporter to delineate when to report versus support.
Building Community Well-Being Among Families
Brighton Center, DCBS, Family Nurturing Center, and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago have partnered to develop the Building Community Well-Being Among Families Project, co-designed with families with lived experience. The vision is to develop a comprehensive child and family well-being system to better address social determinants of health and improve individual and family protective factors. The Project region includes three counties of Northern Kentucky – Campbell, Kenton, and Boone. The Project will serve and strengthen the primary prevention system, including the child welfare system, as well as individuals and families in the community by lifting the voices of those with lived experience and improving access to and responsivity of reimagined primary prevention services. Brighton Center is currently developing a well-being matrix with Chapin Hall and forming a pathway of certification around well-being for families or organizations.
Fatherhood Engagement
We recognize the continuously emerging research on the impact of responsible fatherhood on maltreatment reduction as well as its increase in positive family and child outcomes. In Kentucky, we are taking significant steps to increase father engagement in families and standardize human-centered and father-friendly practices, policies, and procedures through community collaborations such as the Commonwealth Center for Fathers and families.
Kentucky Family Leadership Academy trainings
Kentucky Partnership for Families and Children (KPFC), together with PCAK, is offering Kentucky Family Leadership Academy Trainings throughout the months of October-May. There are four options to attend, both virtually and in-person. These trainings are for caregivers with current or previous services from DCBS, as well as allied partners–including DCBS staff–to strengthen leadership, advocacy, and co-creation and co-design skills.
Division of Prevention and Community Well-Being (DPCW)
The Division of Prevention and Community Well-Being (DPCW) was created out of a legislature approved agency reorganization during the 2022 legislative session and began in January 2023. There are 3 branches within the Division over primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. The Division is currently building staffing capacity. Division priorities include moving upstream, building robust primary and secondary prevention initiatives and branches and leveraging relationships, supporting families, supporting communities, relationship building with true community partners/members, quality improvement, and equity work.
Check out the updated Thriving Families, Safer Children Kentucky one-pager here.
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash and photo by Yan Krukau via Pexels
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