Child Welfare System Prevention Guide
The tools on this page are meant to help guide policy makers in developing community-based resources that will increase child well-being while preventing unnecessary child welfare system involvement.
The guidance you will find here is based on what works – in the experience of researchers, advocates, and lived experts – to address families’ needs in their communities, without the need for a state agency child protection intervention. It reflects a practical approach to addressing how we as a society can distinguish those cases that require a state child welfare system response from those in which poverty, a parent’s disability, or other stressors can be addressed within the family’s community without a child welfare system intervention.
SPARC Prevention ISSUE BRIEFS
These briefs provide details on a range of programs in three categories—Economic and Concrete Supports, Place-Based Services, and Home-Based and Mobile Services—that have shown evidence of promoting child well-being while reducing child welfare system involvement. Invaluable guidance from lived experts is included.
SPARC Prevention FACT SHEETS
These "Strategy Spotlights" on specific prevention approaches—Housing Supports, Warmlines, and Guaranteed Income—explain what these approaches are and how they can help families and communities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The SPARC Prevention Issue Briefs and Fact Sheets were developed for the State Policy Advocacy and Reform Center (SPARC) by Lisa Pilnik (Child and Family Policy Associates), consultant to SPARC, and the leadership of SPARC’s Prevention Workgroup, Susan Elsen (Massachusetts Law Reform Institute), Melissa Hackett (Maine Children’s Alliance) and Elissa Hyne (SPARC/Partnership for America’s Children). SPARC would like to thank our members, particularly the Prevention Workgroup members, and our lived expert consultants for all of their contributions in shaping these documents, and for their tireless work to promote prevention in their own states and nationally. We also thank Madison Dao-Whitten (Brilliant Way Global Consulting) for supporting our work with our lived expert consultants: Jeremiah Donier, Tecoria Jones, Brianna Moore, Pasqueal Nguyen, and Juan Solis; and Meridith Paulhus for her terrific work designing the toolkit and web pages. Finally, we thank the Partnership for America’s Children, which houses SPARC, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and the Aviv Foundation, whose support allowed these resources to be created.
RECOMMENDED CITATION
Lisa Pilnik, Susan Elsen, Melissa Hackett, and Elissa Hyne. (June 2024). SPARC Child Welfare System Prevention Guide. State Policy Advocacy and Reform Center. https://www.sparcforchildren.org/sparc-prevention-guide