Child Welfare Management and Delivery Solutions Book

Innovative management and delivery strategies are making a difference in the lives of children and families around the country Imagine a future in which family strengthening programs are so effective that the number of children impacted by abuse or neglect is one-third of the 674,000 children annually victimized today; a future in which every parent experiencing addiction can access needed treatment; a future in which dramatically fewer children are removed from their parents; and a future in which children can be cared for by a grandparent, aunt, or uncle when home is unsafe.  

By 2022, the Family First Prevention Services Act will be providing more than $180 million a year to help state and local governments make investments in preventative efforts that could turn this vision a reality. However, this transformation will succeed only if public child welfare, early childhood, and other family support systems overcome the operational barriers that often undercut attempts to improve the health and wellbeing of children and their families.  

Today upstream prevention programs inconsistently reach the children and families who would benefit most from early help. The result is that most child welfare interventions are reactive, occurring only after suspected maltreatment has occurred. When children are at risk or unsafe, governments typical fund community organizations to deliver help to these children and their families – yet we see governments treat contracting as a back-office administrative function with limited focus on working with these providers to produce better results. These services are rarely coordinated with other supportive programs, despite many families having addiction, domestic violence, housing, or other needs. 

In the 2007 global economic crisis, we saw that these obstacles are amplified when budget pressures force governments to shrink agency staffing – as is likely to occur again as our country faces the COVID-19 pandemic. These operational challenges also contribute to racial inequity in the child welfare system, exacerbating the troubling overrepresentation and disparate outcomes of children and families of color.  

Nevertheless, one need not “imagine” to find evidence that progress is possible. Throughout the country, there are remarkable cases of public agencies improving practices and outcomes when leadership and technical capacity are aligned. Rhode Island has decreased from 8 percent to 3 percent the share of families opening for child protection following prevention services. In Florida’s Tampa region, the state and its behavioral health providers have doubled the share of parents with substance use needs who swiftly engage in treatment. In Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, two-thirds of children in foster care live with relatives – twice the national rate.  

From these and other examples, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) has identified seventeen management and delivery solutions that governments are using to improve results for children and families. These strategies reflect lessons from our hands-on engagements helping jurisdictions design and implement strategies to overcome performance challenges, as well as innovations we have learned about from other communities. We have written this solutions book in the hope that these approaches will spread more rapidly. 

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