On January 5th, 2021, Kentucky submitted a letter of intent to join the national Thriving Families, Safer Children movement to equip and empower individuals and communities to support families. Our overall goal as one of the participating site teams was to establish universal health promotion for children, youth, and caregivers through proactive protective strengthening. Simply put, we want families to readily have what they need to be whole and manage life so they can stay together in their homes and thrive. 

Let’s continue to cheer on our eager commitment to prevention and take a look at where the Thriving Families, Safer Children Kentucky partnerships and efforts stand today: 

Statewide and Regional Prevention Collaboratives

The regional collaboratives began during the summer of 2022 with convenings, or Visioning Sessions, in which we gathered those living and working in communities to discuss strengths and gaps and brainstorm ideas for community protective factors that could proactively prevent families from coming to the attention of the child welfare system. Those conversations led to the development of action plans specific to each of the nine Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) service regions. 

This summer will be two years since the Visioning Sessions were held and roughly 18 months of implementing the plans. We are currently in the process of discussing Re-Visioning Sessions to assess progress on the objectives and determine strategy modifications on the plans moving forward. The statewide prevention collaborative has been in discussion around aligning with the regional prevention collaboratives to support common needs that span across multiple regions. 

Truth and Reconciliation: Truth Telling Circles

This initiative is a collaboration between Kentucky Youth Advocates/True Up, foster care alumni, University of Louisville (UofL), and the Kempe Center, that seeks to highlight and decrease the disproportionality of Black foster youth in Louisville through the sharing of testimonies and collective community advocacy. The grant team has solidified a top recommendation that would provide evidence-informed financial support and case management to birth parents, for the purpose of keeping Black families intact and youth out of the foster care system. 

Community is Our Strength: Empowering Black Families and Promoting Child Safety in Louisville

This federal cooperative agreement is a partnership spearheaded by Kentucky Youth Advocates, Play Cousins Collective, University of Louisville, and Kempe Center. The overarching goal is to reduce the harm done to economically vulnerable Black families from unnecessary, disruptive, and traumatic contact with the child welfare system. Currently, community meetings are being conducted with birth parents, foster care alumni, DCBS, and community partners to create a shared Equity Impact Statement that will be embedded into the work. 

Note: This initiative is financially supported by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) but may not necessarily reflect their views.

Kentucky System Experience At the Table (KY SEAT) Parent Advisory Council

Parent voice in Kentucky is continuing to grow! The statewide parent council of mothers and fathers with former child welfare involvement onboarded a group of new members in January. The council now has over 20 parent members who are both emerging and seasoned leaders. KY SEAT held its first in-person meeting for 2024 at the Rally for Kentucky Kids at the Capitol during KYA’s Children’s Advocacy Week and had a networking lunch with DCBS leadership that was comprised of a little over 50% lived experts alongside a handful of critical agency leaders. They also got to meet other key decision makers from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, DCBS partnerships, and the legislature.

Community Response Pilots

Community Response is a model to support families in their communities who have needs but whose reports do not meet acceptance criteria for abuse or neglect. It is currently available in 10 counties across the state. DCBS’ Division of Prevention and Community Wellbeing (DPCW)  is excited about receiving additional guidance to facilitate the expansion of Community Response and improving programs to meet families where they are, outside of child welfare involvement if possible.

Alternative Response

Alternative Response (AR) is a family-centered, strengths-based approach for responding to low- to moderate-risk reports that meet acceptance criteria for a child protection services (CPS) intervention. AR allows caseworkers to work alongside families in a way that creates a partnership and decreases the adversarial contact between individuals and DCBS workers. It is a highly researched model of practice utilized in over 20 states and jurisdictions. The development of this model in Kentucky specifically has been a partnership between The Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect as well as DCBS’s Child Protection Branch. Both parent lived experts and peer support specialists have also been involved with the preliminary planning, implementation, and evaluation preparation. Northeastern and Two Rivers Service Regions began implementing AR in 2023 and Northern Bluegrass, Cumberland, and Eastern Mountain Service Regions will be accepting AR referrals in May and June 2024. The goal is for AR to be available statewide by early 2025. 

Lean on Me Kentucky

Lean on Me Kentucky is a statewide campaign to spread the messaging of Thriving Families, Safer Children – that families should receive community support whenever possible. Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky (PCAK) recently partnered with statewide groups, such as WellCare Health Plans and the Kentucky Chamber, to promote Lean on Me Kentucky (LOMKY) among employees. They also created trainings specific to military-connected families. 1,732 total individuals received LOMKY content so far through staff trainings and presentations resulting in 98% of attendees indicating they are better prepared to prevent maltreatment prior to the need for CPS involvement through evaluation results. PCAK is currently in the process of strategic planning with the Department for Community Based Services to isolate the next action steps for the campaign and increased utilization within local community programming. 

Fatherhood Engagement

The Commonwealth Center for Fathers and Families (CCFF) is developing a robust list of training activities that include, in part, presentations, and workshops with organizations from the following sectors: child maltreatment, Family and Youth Resource Service Centers, Community Collaboration for Childrens (CCCs), juvenile justice, probation and parole, recovery, DCBS’s regional leadership and others. CCFF and its partners are currently following several pieces of legislation that are believed to have implications on healthy family formation and father inclusive practices, policies, and approaches. Applications are currently open for proposals for mini grant participation to increase fatherhood program activities and programs in the state as well as for the KY DAD Academy for dads with lived experience who want to be ambassadors for fatherhood in their communities.

Kentucky Family Leadership Academy Trainings and Co-Design Curriculum

The Kentucky Partnership for Families and Children has completed two of four scheduled Kentucky Family Leadership Academies with approximately 30 completions, anticipating over 75 total attendees. They have also completed a developed curriculum on Co-Design in Child Welfare and training will begin in March. Lastly, they are continuing partnerships with DCBS, the Kempe Center, and national technical assistance for incorporating peer support into the various pathways for both screened-in and screened-out reports. 

Upstream

Upstream is a community-based approach that leverages court resources, judicial leadership, and child welfare agency partnerships to enhance community collaboration through state and local coordination, community mapping, and action planning. This collaboration aims to strengthen communities, prevent child maltreatment and out-of-home placement, reduce court involvement, and support safe and healthy families. Upstream incorporates judicial leadership and brings the court into a proactive role in prevention. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) developed the Upstream Model: Strengthening Children and Families through Prevention and Intervention. NCSC has designated Kentucky an Upstream pilot site. The Upstream project is housed in the Dependency, Neglect and Abuse workgroup of the Civil and Family Justice Committee for the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health.

Department for Community Based Services and Equity

The DCBS Equity Core team meets monthly and continues with making progress toward enterprise goals to address racism and poverty. The DCBS Equity Core team holds quarterly report outs to update leadership on successes, barriers and needs. All divisions and service regions continue with their respective equity teams and are making progress toward enterprise goals. DCBS service regions and divisions are still using and applying the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) tool. DCBS also maintains sharing information around equity, addressing racism and poverty with all staff via newsletters and email.

Kentucky Strengthening Families

Kentucky Strengthening Families (KYSF) Initiative is using a nationally recognized strategy – Strengthening Families: A Protective Factors Framework – which is coordinated by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. The initiative brings together program-level and system-level partners from multiple sectors that serve children, families and youth – providing a common language and set of outcomes to work toward. The KYSF Initiative continues to partner with local communities and statewide agencies on utilizing the framework to support children and families through a prevention effort. They are currently providing training across the state and will also be hosting Youth Thrive and Youth Café trainings across the state. 

Family Resource and Youth Service Centers

Family Resource and Youth Services Centers’ (FRYSC) primary goal is to remove non-academic barriers to learning and increase protective factors to enhance student academic success. Each center offers a unique blend of programs and services determined by the needs of the population being served, available resources, location, and other local characteristics.  The FRYSC structure ensures intentional and extensive collaboration between human services and education to allow for a whole-child approach to student and family services which sets a national standard for school-based family support.

FRYSCs are providing kinship care support through a variety of ways. Currently, 44% of FRYSCs are hosting support groups, 84% of FRYSCs are providing resources and 74% are making referrals to an outside agency for additional support. Other methods of support include, but are not limited to, assistance with school enrollment, guardianship paperwork, navigating support agencies and systems, on-site mental health counseling, information about guardianship annual conferences, basic needs, and holiday assistance.

There are currently 888 Family Resource and Youth Service Centers serving children and families across the state of Kentucky. Contact your local school district to see how you can get connected. Learn more here.

Building the Voices of Lived Experience: Lessons Learned from Navigating the System

Kentucky Youth Advocates, with support from Casey Family Programs, has spent the last several months working in collaboration with child welfare stakeholders (birth parents, kinship caregivers, former foster youth, and foster parents) getting feedback on the common issues they faced when first involved in the system. The goal of the project is to use the information collected to help educate the system, increase utilization of services already in place, encourage more transparent and effective communication from service providers to child welfare stakeholders to improve outcomes, and create positive change for future persons involved with the child welfare system. 

A report of the focus group findings was recently published and resource and information products for both child welfare-involved individuals and child welfare workers are being finalized for release. Throughout 2024, KYA will partner with parent and child attorneys to focus on adding additional navigation information to the resources specific to the legal aspects of involvement.