In 2013, over 50 percent of the 36,000 cases investigated by Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) had an indication of parental substance use. DCF hoped to support these recovering parents by matching them to recovery and support services while limiting removals of their children, so the agency worked with the GPL to launch the Family Stability Pay for Success project. This project identified a crucial gap in services for families with children aged 3-6 and expanded these services to support 500 additional families in need. The GPL also worked with DCF to...

Creating performance metrics, developing short- and long-term strategies for service allocation, and aligning the service array around the core needs of children and families served by the state

Michigan sought to expand prenatal and postpartum support in order to reduce the likelihood of negative health outcomes for new mothers and their children. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, Kent County is expanding comprehensive nurse home visiting services to every Medicaid-eligible, first-time mother to provide prenatal care, breastfeeding support, parenting and life skills-building, and additional services as needed. Assessed by a rigorous evaluation, the program is helping to reduce preterm births and rapid repeat pregnancies for new moms.  

Striving to lower rates of preterm births and child injuries, the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership aims to give new moms the care they need to have healthy pregnancies and babies. The GPL worked with South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) to provide nurse home visiting services to 4,000 low-income, first-time mothers from the second trimester of their pregnancy until their child’s second birthday. The model incentivizes NFP to focus on enrolling mothers from low-income zip codes, reducing child injuries and pre-term births, and increasing healthy birth...

The GPL worked with DCYF on strategic planning to assess service needs and design an approach for improving services for children and families, executing a results-driven procurement for a new set of service contracts, strengthening their contract and provider performance management practices, and designing a strategic procurement management system to improve the results of contracted spending throughout the agency.

Connecting at-risk families with high quality early learning programs and family home visiting services