New Resource on Community Helplines and Child Welfare Hotlines

The Quality Improvement Center on Helplines and Hotlines recently launched a website that offers practical, research-based solutions for child protection hotlines and community helplines to support all families in reaching their full potential. The website includes answers to common questions about child welfare, helplines, and hotlines, as well as curated news, op-eds, reports, and research briefs about hotlines, helplines, and the front door of the child welfare system.

The purpose of the Center is to develop practical strategies to keep children safe, target child protection resources effectively, and help families thrive. The Center is administered by Evident Change in partnership with Social Current and the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance as part of a cooperative agreement with the Children’s Bureau.

It has three goals:

• Support child protective services (CPS) agencies in their mission to protect children
• Help mandated reporters, CPS hotline staff, and other community partners make more effective decisions, particularly in distinguishing families who require child protection intervention from families whose needs could be met through community-based services and support
• Create an information hub for best practices and operations for community-based helplines to function as supportive resources for families whose needs do not require child protection intervention

To address these goals, the Center will:

• Collect and share best practices for CPS hotline interviewing and assessment, particularly to ensure that all child safety concerns are appropriately investigated
• Develop practical, evidence-based curricula to train mandated reporters and CPS hotline workers to make clear, quality decisions
• Collect and create information about best practices for distinguishing families who require child protection intervention from families whose needs could be met through community-based services and support
• Recruit and train pilot sites across the country to implement and test new strategies
• Conduct a rigorous evaluation of pilot sites and share findings nationally

By working together, we can support CPS agencies and mandated reporters to protect children from harm, create better pathways to meet families’ needs, and ensure all children and families have the chance to thrive.
To learn more, subscribe to the Center’s announcements and visit the website.