An Introduction to the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Grantees and Strategies

The goal of the CWCC initiative is to fund collaborative projects that address local barriers and provide a continuum of supports to promote child and family well-being and strengthen protective factors, ultimately leading to fewer new referrals to child welfare and more families staying together. While each CWCC project shared this goal, they proposed a diverse range of strategies to achieve their desired outcomes. 

This brief is the first of many from the cross-site process evaluation designed to advance the evidence around collaborative approaches to preventing child abuse and neglect. It sets the stage for future products by clearly describing the timeline for CWCC activities and the specific activities that grantees and their collaborative partners undertook. Altogether, the findings from the cross-site process study will contribute to the evidence base for collaborative prevention efforts and inform efforts in child welfare towards a system of primary prevention. 

ACF’s CWCC initiative funded 13 collaborative efforts across the United States to prevent child maltreatment and reduce community-level rates of child abuse, neglect, and out-of-home placements. While grantees shared a common goal, they were diverse geographically, organizationally, and in the specific strategies they undertook. Grantees spanned urban and rural communities throughout the continental US and Alaska and represented a mix of public agencies, non-profits, and even academic institutions. Given the CWCC initiative’s focus on strategic coordination, it’s not surprising that all grantees incorporated some systems alignment activities designed to promote community collaboration and strengthen communities’ prevention services network. All grantees also incorporated at least one community-level strategy designed to promote positive change in the community and at least one individual-level strategy designed to increase protective factors and promote well-being. 

This brief uses information from grantee’s applications, semi-annual progress reports, and summaries of each grantee created by the evaluation TA team to describe the strategies that CWCC grantees included in their initial approaches. The evaluation team also asked CWCC project directors to review the descriptions of their project for accuracy. 

Cook, R., Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2023). An Introduction to the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Grantees and Strategies. OPRE Report 2023-332, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.