Our Expertise: Child & Family Well-Being
Child Safety Forward
A national initiative to reduce child abuse and neglect fatalities and injuries through a collaborative, community-based approach.
Our Expertise: Child & Family Well-Being
A national initiative to reduce child abuse and neglect fatalities and injuries through a collaborative, community-based approach.
Children in the U.S. are healthier and safer than ever before, and medical advances in treating childhood diseases have made enormous strides over the last few decades. Although the overall U.S. child mortality rate has improved over time, the number of child deaths due to abuse and neglect has remained steady or even increased. Each year, somewhere between 1,750 to 3,500 children die from maltreatment. The children who die are quite young. In 2018, 71% of all children who died from maltreatment were younger than three years old. Almost one-half of the children are younger than one year old.
Like other causes of childhood illness and death, child maltreatment can be prevented, and the associated risk factors can be addressed. Child maltreatment deaths are not inevitable. This was the message delivered in a groundbreaking report from the U.S. Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities. In its 2016 report Within Our Reach: A National Strategy to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, the commission provided a blueprint for a public health approach that identifies and addresses the root causes of child maltreatment, engages with multiple stakeholders to address these causes collaboratively, and is a shared responsibility between families and communities.
In October 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office for Victims of Crime launched Child Safety Forward, a three-year demonstration initiative to develop multidisciplinary strategies and responses to address serious or near-death injuries as a result of child abuse or neglect and to reduce the number of child fatalities. The efforts will be responsive to the 21st-Century Child Welfare System as envisioned by the federal commission and will result in models for coordinated responses. Within Our Reach, an office at Social Current that is supported by Casey Family Programs, serves as the national technical assistance provider to the five demonstration sites.
The five participating sites are:
The sites are receiving technical assistance from a team of national experts that is geared toward helping them plan and implement an all-systems approach and coordinated strategic planning to respond to and reduce their child maltreatment fatalities and child crime victimization. It will support them in improved data collection and analysis using a safety science approach, development of strong community collaboratives, engagement of persons with lived experiences, and developmental evaluation.
Read the final evaluation report for more information about the sites, key lessons, and takeaways of the initiative.
In 2019, Indiana completed
child abuse and neglect assessments.
The 3rd highest rate in the nation.
In 2019,
reports were made to the Child Abuse Hotline in Indiana.
of removals of children from their homes in 2019 were related to parental substance abuse.
child fatalities due to external injury from 2014 to 2018 will be reviewed.
Retrospective reviews of child fatalities will be conducted in four counties to help identify family and systemic circumstances for those deaths.
Once evaluation is complete (through the Indiana University (IU) School of Social Work), the ISDH/IU team will create a plan to mitigate risk factors that affect children in order reduce those fatalities.
Protocols will include the following:
This report is the culmination of an in-depth evaluation of the Child Safety Forward – Indiana project. Their findings from 127 child fatality reviews conducted during the project period, along with documentation of the multiple ways that the CSF Indiana team has secured improvements to the child fatality review process in the State. The Indiana team also provides a set of recommendations based on the evaluation that is intended to further enhance the capacity of Indiana communities to prevent child fatalities due to external injury. See the final evaluation document here.
Final Evaluation Brief
As part of the final implementation study, each site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned. See the final evaluation brief here.
An average of
reports are made annually in the state of Illinois for deaths, or serious injuries, due to suspected child abuse or neglect.
It is estimated,
of children who die from fatal injuries caused by child maltreatment have had no previous contact with the child welfare system.
Retrospective reviews of child fatalities and serious injuries will be conducted in three counties to help identify family and systemic circumstances for those deaths.
Community stakeholders will explore potential service gaps that may place children at risk for maltreatment including:
In addition to facilitating information sharing, Cook County Health will:
Cook County took a public health approach to better understand the high child abuse and neglect reports in three Illinois counties–Cook, Peoria, and Vermilion. They convened a multi-disciplinary group of community stakeholders who work with vulnerable families in a variety of different settings to form Project CHILD. Together, Project CHILD acquired data that helped them better understand the challenges these three counties were facing and the strategies they could implement to improve the conditions. See the final evaluation document here.
Final Evaluation Brief
As part of the final implementation study, each site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned. See the final evaluation brief here.
children were victims of an abuse and neglect fatality/near-fatality
of victims were ages 1–5 and 50% were <1
of perpetrators were biological parents acting together or alone
had prior child welfare involvement
3 frameworks will be used in the development and implementation of the strategic plan: 21st Century Child Welfare System, Public Health Model, and Collective Impact.
Community stakeholders will explore potential service gaps that may place children at risk for maltreatment including:
Department of Child, Family and Adult Services
Protocols will include the following:
This initiative has supported the Sacramento County Prevention Cabinet (Prevention Cabinet) to plan and implement a cross-systems strategic plan that incorporates the principles of the public health approach and the core components of the 21st-century child welfare system, as identified in Within Our Reach: A National Strategy to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities. See the final evaluation document here.
Final Evaluation Brief
As part of the final implementation study, each site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned. See the final evaluation brief here.
Hartford, Connecticut averaged
substantiated cases of child maltreatment per 1000 children
That is nearly
the state and national average during the same period
Challenges in strategic coordination and disconnect between organizations will be remedied through a community-based, public health approach.
A multidisciplinary team of stakeholders comprised of state agencies and community-based organizations to:
In addition to facilitating information findings, Saint Francis will:
Hartford’s Child Safety Forward project brought together a multidisciplinary team of stakeholders to share data, coordinate services, facilitate community participation, and seek best practice recommendations. As a core strategy, the site recruited a Parent Engagement Workgroup drawn from parents with lived experience with the foster care and child welfare systems and other local advocacy groups. Watch this video to meet the parents and grandparents of the Parent Engagement Work Group. They share what child safety and shifting power to parents means to them, why they joined the work group, and more.
Project Overviews
These files include a summary of data collection results that was presented by the independent evaluator and a written report outlining lessons learned through the entirety of the project and goals and plans for project continuation.
Educational Guide: From Pain to Parenting
This educational guide created by the Child Safety Forward Hartford team and its Parent Engagement Workgroup addresses multiple topics to help parents raise healthy, safe children. Following the conclusion of Child Safety Forward participation, parents will implement this curriculum throughout Hartford’s neighborhoods.
Final Evaluation Brief
As part of the final implementation study, each site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned. See the final evaluation brief here.
With input from an advisory panel, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services will focus on the following:
To improve the level of services for families, they will examine outcomes of current policies and practices related to families with low or moderate risk for child maltreatment to identify change recommendations. They will also partner with statewide or regional outreach efforts that focus on protective factors and work to promote these services to families.
Finally, they will review current safety planning practices, assess the perceived needs, barriers, and facilitators to safety planning among child protective services workers and other professionals, and assess the perceptions of safety plans among persons with lived experience. Collectively, this information will be used to identify areas for practice change and inform the development of educational resources and supports to reinforce safety plan best practices.
counties
have no substance use treatment facilities and an additional
counties
have high population to facility ratios
counties
have no mental health treatment facilities and an additional
counties
have high population to facility ratios
During the first 15 months of the initiative, the Child Safety Forward Michigan team convened a collaborative body of diverse partners to advise and provide insight on the needs of the larger community and worked to build learning capacity and increase understanding on the issues surrounding child maltreatment. Through their findings, they began implementing strategies meant to: 1) employ a collective impact approach to improve the resiliency of Michigan families, 2) enhance services for families with low to moderate risk levels for child maltreatment, and 3) improve safety planning across the child welfare system. See the final evaluation document here.
Final Evaluation Brief
As part of the final implementation study, each site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned. See the final evaluation brief here.
This product was supported by cooperative agreement number 2019-V3-GX-K005,
The OVC FY 2019 Reducing Child Fatalities and Recurring Child Injuries Caused by Crime Victimization demonstration initiative.
As part of the final implementation study, each demonstration site identified a practice or policy change advanced through their work with CSF for a dialogue on how to impact systems change. These briefs delve into the design of the site’s policy or practice and suggests recommendations for similar initiatives based on the site’s experiences and lessons learned.
This evaluation brief offers insights on the learning that took place during the planning year of the initiative. It identifies four opportunities for the field that, when addressed, will accelerate the advancement of a 21st-century child and family well-being system.
In year two, while focused on implementation, the initiative refined the theory of change to include greater intentionality around three core conditions. This set of briefs delves into those conditions:
The safe sleep brief is set up to offer providers a tool based on Child Safety Forward learning to help think through how bias shows up at the individual, relational, and institutional level and helps re-design our work with community so that we stand a far greater chance of finding solutions in partnership with them around the universal goal of child safety.
This sustainability brief learning examines how Child Safety Forward was set up to encourage demonstration sites to apply a more comprehensive definition of sustainability during implementation, and it presents our recommendations for how funders and technical assistance teams can support sustainability.
During the first planning year of the Child Safety Forward initiative, the technical assistance team developed a series of resource briefs on topics most relevant to the demonstration sites. Topics were identified through a needs assessment and conversations with the sites about their interests. These briefs helped to inform strategies chosen by the sites for the two-year implementation period.