Connecting Michigan Families to Community Services after a Child Welfare Hotline Call

Impact Highlight: As of January 2025, following GPL support, approximately 5,400 families have been referred to the community providers participating in the Michigan MiFamily Stronger Together Program. The program offers services that might help prevent interaction with the child welfare system.  

Project Context: 

• Many families are reported to child protection hotlines because of poverty and other unmet needs, rather than issues that rise to the level of child abuse or neglect. As a result, these families are “screened out” usually with no offers of support. For some families, these needs may escalate over time leading them to later be re-reported to the hotline and screen in — meaning a punitive and often traumatic interaction with child protection services. 
  • In Michigan, around one in four caregivers (nearly 73,000 people) who are reported to the hotline will screen out but will be called in again and subsequently investigated within one year, possibly because their original needs were never met. 
• To better serve these families, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) started the MiFamily Stronger Together Screen Out Pathways program in 2022. 
  • When a community member (e.g., a teacher) reports a family to the hotline who does not require child welfare investigation but could benefit from community resources like food, health care, or mental health services, this program enlists community-based organizations to offer families voluntary support on their terms. 
•  Now, in several regions of the state, community resource hubs, including Family Resource Centers, Community Action Agencies, and 211 call centers work to connect families to earlier, voluntary community resources based on what the family says they need. The goal is to prevent unnecessary contact with the child welfare system. 

How the GPL is Supporting: 

• Collaborating with service providers and families with lived experience to develop standard referral pathway practices. 
  • This includes creating sample outreach language, strategies to support “warmer” connections to supports and follow-up, and service landscape mapping tools to increase the share of families who actually reach the services they ask for. 
  • Families have stressed the value of locating supports in the community and reducing barriers, such as making it easier to find the right resource, simplifying applications, and reducing waitlists.   
• Analyzing data, interviewing past clients, and conducting site visits to identify opportunities to improve family engagement, connections to resources, and general experiences with the pathways. 
• Helping Michigan use information on families’ needs and trends in longer-term outcomes, such as subsequent child welfare involvement, to inform their general child wellbeing and prevention strategies. 
  • For example, across sites, most families (approximately 70% of referrals) ask for support with basic needs like housing, food assistance, and utilities. MI’s Child Welfare agency has shared this data with sister agencies who manage benefits like Medicaid, TANF, and utility assistance programs to find ways to better connect families with meaningful supports that can disrupt cycles of child welfare involvement. 

 Results: 

• Approximately 5,400 families have been referred to the community providers participating in the MiFamily Stronger Together Program as of January 2025.   
• Across sites, roughly 20% of families referred chose to participate, with early data showing engagement rates ranging from 15% to as high as 60% for a rural resource hub with a strong reputation in a smaller, resource-scarce community. 
• Across all providers, key drivers of higher engagement include:  
  • Strong organizational reputation. 
  • Using texting for initial outreach.  
  • Giving families clear examples of the types of supports they can be connected to through the resource hubs.