What is Community Child Protection?

Child Welfare Project

What is Community Child Protection?

Most child welfare experts agree that state and county bureaucracies too often fail to protect children from abuse and neglect and that local communities should take a more active role in preventing maltreatment and ensuring the safety and well being of children. In dozens of communities across the country, child protective services agencies are partnering with schools, police, neighbors, relatives, clergy and local service providers in new and exciting ways to:

Head off maltreatment before it occurs;
Quickly and effectively respond to cases of child abuse; and,
Provide families with services and supports in their home communities.

What Can Legislators Do?

State lawmakers are crucial to efforts to protect children. They define child abuse and neglect, mandate who must report child maltreatment, structure and appropriate funds for child welfare agencies and prescribe CPS functions. Because community child protection envisions a more flexible, community-based response to child abuse, lawmakers can play an important role in the expansion of community child protection. They can:

Establish pilot programs
Authorize multiple response approaches to child abuse reports
Establish a "neighborhood place" for families
Reduce barriers to collaboration between CPS and the community
Mandate coordinated responses to troubled families
Appropriate funds, direct TANF funds towards the development of some of these programs
As community-leaders, they can promote community child protection efforts beyond legislative change

What Are Other States Doing?

In St. Louis, Missouri, the St. Louis Neighborhood Network partners teachers, parents, community leaders, private agencies and the Division of Family Services in a collaborative effort to serve children and families. The Division of Family Services now stations CPS caseworkers in community schools, churches and neighborhood organizations. This enables them to link up with local service providers, school personnel and community residents to work with families and provide protective services right in the neighborhood. This effort built upon state-initiated reforms that included the 1994 passage of legislation to pilot a more flexible "dual-track" response to abuse and neglect reports. Serious reports trigger an investigation; less severe allegations result in a full assessment of the family with follow-up services as needed. Positive results from an outside evaluation of the pilot sites (St. Louis was one of the sites) convinced lawmakers to go statewide with the "dual-track" approach in 1998. The legislation has encouraged new ways for CPS and the community to work together to protect children.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa's Community Partnership for Safe Families are centered around two elementary school hubs. CPS workers are stationed at these centers and work with local service providers and families to offer childcare, Head Start, public assistance and protective services. The Cedar Rapids site was also a pilot site for the state's 1995 "assessment" legislation that authorized a flexible response to child abuse reports - tailoring interventions to suit each family's needs and strengths.

There are also community partnership sites in Jacksonville, Florida, Louisville, Kentucky and other areas around the country. In addition, lawmakers from states including Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Texas have crafted legislation in recent years to experiment with flexible responses to reports of child abuse and neglect and allow for increased community involvement.

How Will This Benefit People in My State?

Community child protection is one promising new strategy that many states and localities are examining closely. The approach includes:

An emphasis on child safety
New collaborative roles for CPS, community members, parents and community organizations
A cost-effective way to provide badly needed services to families - CPS agencies can re-assign and re-train staff and take advantage of existing community services, networks and strengths

Kentucky State Representative Tom Burch commented, "On Friday, April 9, 1999, I had the pleasant opportunity to visit the Ribault Full Service School in Jacksonville, Florida. This school has combined all the services available to protect community children and families. I was very impressed with what I saw. In my district in Louisville, we have a similar organization called Neighborhood Place. I cannot tell you the compliments and encouragement we have received from the residents who use facilities. I am encouraging the Kentucky General Assembly to fund more Neighborhood Places throughout the Commonwealth."

For more information on child welfare, contact NCSL's Child Welfare project staff at 303/364-7700.