Connecting Families involved with Child Welfare to Early Learning Services in Washington

Impact Highlight: Building off GPL support, since 2024, Washington state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families has funded 10 Child Welfare Early Learning Navigators across six regions, allowing them to serve 5,333 children, or 25% of eligible children statewide.

Project Context:

• Access to early learning services can improve children’s health, socio-emotional development, and educational attainment. Washington state was paying for such services, yet the 23,500 families who became involved with child protective services each year were often not referred to these programs.
• Washington state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) wanted to offer early learning and/or family support programs to these families; however, they didn’t know which practice changes were needed to do so.

How the GPL Supported:

• Helped DCYF establish a dedicated early learning service navigator position.
  • These staff members work alongside CPS caseworkers to proactively identify and reach out to eligible families, assess their needs, match them with a community service, and follow-up to ensure their needs were met.
• Helped DCYF adjust systems-level processes to make identification of eligible families easier. This included:
  • Creating a new case management system report of all cases with children under five, including both the child in question, and any other household members under five. This offered a way to systematically track whether or not the referrals were offered. It also reminded case workers and supervisors to offer early learning services for cases that they might have previously overlooked (e.g., a case regarding an older child, but who has a younger sibling).
  • Developing a family conversation guide to help caseworkers feel more knowledgeable and confident sharing information about programs with families. Caseworkers typically weren’t as familiar with early learning programs as they were with other community services.
  • Simplifying the referral process by modifying the state’s existing case management technology platform so staff could easily initiate referrals to early learning programs, instead of requiring them to repeatedly enter information or use different paper forms, emails, phone calls, or faxes.

Results:

• In the communities where both system-level changes and navigators were rolled out, nearly three in four eligible families were offered a connection to early learning services, were already enrolled in early learning, or were found to not need early learning.
• DCYF found that by giving its staff the time and tools to explain potential resources to families, families were more likely to express interest in a referral.
• Families of color were connected to resources at rates at least proportional to their representation in the community population. Among families for whom race information is available, Black families — who had been underrepresented in Washington’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program and home visiting services — were being offered these voluntary supports 30% more frequently than their peers.
• Since the initial pilot:
  • In communities with a Child Welfare Early Learning Navigator (CWELN) at least 44% of families eligible for key early learning programs enroll in services compared to 25% enrollment in communities without a CWELN.
  • As of 2024, DCYF had funded 10 CWELNs across six regions, allowing them to serve 5,333 children, or 25% of eligible children statewide. The agency hopes to hire five more CWELNs including an additional Tribal CWELN and two CWELNs focused on families in out-of-home placement.