How are jurisdictions building community pathways to prevention services through Family First?

The Family First Prevention Services Act (“Family First”), enacted in February 2018, created a federal entitlement with the stated purpose of reducing entries into foster care by allowing states and Tribes to use federal Title IV-E funds for prevention services that support children to live safely with their families. The law provided an unprecedented opportunity to reorient child welfare and advance system transformation in regard to the types of services offered, which families receive services, and how and where they access them.

This opportunity has led a growing number of jurisdictions to re-conceptualize the front end of their service delivery system and shift their prevention paradigm. Offering support within community-based settings, such that families don’t come into direct contact with the child welfare system unnecessarily, creates what are called “community pathways” to prevention services. Through these pathways, approved entities such as family resource centers, prevention services providers, and other community and public agencies may deliver support and perform required Family First administrative functions.

According to a Chapin Hall policy brief, 22 states, the District of Columbia, and one Tribe either are conceptualizing, readying, or implementing community pathways. A growing number of them are including community pathways in their Title IV-E Prevention Program plans (also known as Family First prevention plans), some of which have been approved by the federal Children’s Bureau.¹ For example, Colorado’s second phase of Family First implementation was approved in December 2024 and included the launch of a community pathway to SafeCare®, an evidence-based, in-home parent training program. The growing use of community pathways as mechanisms to support families was discussed at a July 2025 Community Pathway Convening co-hosted by Casey Family Programs and Chapin Hall, and attended by nearly 80 child welfare leaders, policy experts, and lived experts.

Implementing community pathways is about more than expanding services. Community pathways offer fundamentally different service delivery experiences for families, especially those who may distrust public entities or consider child protection services punitive and threatening. Community pathways also give jurisdictions opportunities to work in new ways with their trusted partners to empower and strengthen communities to keep children safe and reduce the need for family involvement with the child welfare system.

The need for community pathways

The large volume of reports to child protection hotlines each year that are screened out, unsubstantiated, or include allegations of solely neglect suggests that many families may benefit from support outside of the child welfare system.² Subjecting families to unnecessary child protection investigations is traumatic for children and families and disproportionately affects families of color.

A lack of trust in public systems may impede families’ willingness to engage in voluntary prevention services that could benefit their children by promoting safety, stability and well-being. Timothy Phipps, a parent mentor in Oregon with lived experience in the child welfare system, said families often are unwilling to ask for help for fear of a child protection agency stepping in. “Investing upstream can distribute the responsibility of safety across the community and help shrink the role of child protection agencies,” he said.

Families should have access to culturally relevant support services in their local communities from organizations they trust. The strengths and needs of families should drive the focus and duration of those services. In cases where child removal is necessary, flexibility to involve community-based services to support reunification is critical. These services can exist both alongside and outside of the child protection agency, with funding support, at least in part, from Title IV-E.

Three unique approaches

In Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Indiana, community pathways approaches are well underway. All three have used Family First as a strategic lever to advance efforts in their jurisdictions to develop more comprehensive, accessible systems of prevention support.3

• In 2023, Connecticut created a central place for families to call or be referred when they need support. This prevention care management entity is empowered to connect families to services without any direct contact with the child protection agency. This model takes a public health approach in which any family can call and talk to an engagement specialist about their concerns and get connected to a resource or service that meets their individual needs.
• Washington, D.C., has built a prevention strategy in which families that come to the attention of child welfare are referred to one of five community collaboratives. These trusted organizations, located throughout the city, provide case management using the evidence-based Motivational Interviewing model to connect families to specific services based on their needs. Under its amended prevention plan, the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency partners with the city’s Department of Human Services, which has incorporated Motivational Interviewing into its support for families experiencing homelessness.
• Indiana has developed its community pathway strategy in partnership with Healthy Families Indiana, an evidence-based home visiting program that has served families across the state for many years and has a track record of preventing child maltreatment. Families can self-refer or be referred to the program and will not have any formal connection to the child protection agency.

Key considerations

Lessons from the experiences of Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Indiana can help child welfare leaders working with partners to develop sustainable, community supports that families can access outside of the child welfare system.

Invest in partnerships

Developing a Family First plan allows child protection agency leaders and staff to engage advocates, people with lived expertise, executives from other public agencies, Tribes, and other community stakeholders. Together, they can co-design a comprehensive prevention services plan that respects stakeholder interests and relationships, and helps build productive partnerships that are sustainable.

In Connecticut, development of its community engagement in prevention plan started early and included multiple opportunities for stakeholder participation, including long-term workgroups and less time-consuming, more individualized avenues such as focus groups and surveys. Sharon Davis, director of family and community services at the Department of Children and Families, emphasized that sufficient time to engage people with lived expertise and dedicated staffing to oversee implementation were both critical to the state’s progress. To underscore the collaborative nature of the effort, each workgroup within Connecticut’s planning effort was co-chaired by an agency leader and a community partner. Multiple feedback loops helped stakeholders see how guidance and recommendations from workgroups, surveys, and other sources influenced the plan. Near the end of the process, the agency shared the draft plan with four “Parents as Experts” focus groups (three in English and one in Spanish) to elicit additional feedback and refinement.

Washington, D.C.’s nine-month Family First planning process began in July 2018 and involved multiple agencies. Building on collaborative work from 2012, directors from all entities working with families came to the table, including behavioral health, public health, human services, employment services, housing and community development, the courts, and the community collaboratives. Impacted providers and families also participated through focus groups and subcommittees. Natalie Craver, former deputy director of the Office of Community Partnerships at the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, recommends building on existing partnerships whenever possible.

David Reed, former deputy director of child welfare services with the Indiana Department of Child Services, emphasized the importance of keeping an eye on the big picture when bringing new partners to the table. “Be consistent in your messaging,” he said. “Keep talking, keep engaging, and focus on communicating what you are trying to do and why. You will get to the details, but you must also keep a focus on the vision.”

Identify families that need support

Family First describes candidates for Title IV-E prevention services as families that have children who are at “imminent risk” of entering foster care, leaving specific definitions of candidacy and imminent risk to states and Tribes. Indiana, D.C., and Connecticut all took different approaches to identifying families that could benefit.

In Indiana, the Department of Child Services turned to Healthy Families America (HFA) as its initial community pathway provider and HFA-eligible families as the population the state would serve. HFA has broad eligibility criteria with a focus on families with risk of system involvement. The evidence-based model, which includes access to social, economic, and concrete supports, has a service delivery infrastructure across the state and, until recently, was funded largely through federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars. Indiana began claiming Title IV-E dollars through Family First for HFA in 2023. This upstream investment has paid off. Indiana has administered the Healthy Families program statewide for over 30 years, and participation in the program has prevented child maltreatment in almost all (over 99%) of the families that receive 12 or more home visits, said Hannah Robinson, prevention services manager at the Department of Child Services.

Initially, Washington, D.C., identified subgroups of families coming into contact with the child welfare system that could, based on a clinical assessment, be safely referred to services in the community. This included families that may have been substantiated for child abuse or neglect but now have low or moderate risk, and families with high levels of risk but no substantiated finding. In 2023, the Child and Family Services Agency began partnering with the city’s Department of Human Services to broaden the target population for prevention services to include children and their families currently experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.

Connecticut’s candidacy workgroup identified 10 groups of children and families with a heightened risk of separation. They included: 1) children chronically absent from school; 2) children of incarcerated parents; 3) adolescents who are unstably housed or experiencing homelessness; 4) families experiencing interpersonal violence; and 5) caregivers with a substance use disorder, mental health condition, or disability that impacts parenting. Connecticut’s data-driven approach to candidacy determination demonstrates how Family First can be leveraged to support broad groups of children and families before traditional child welfare system involvement becomes necessary. The creation of a central prevention care management entity (operated by Carelon) resulted in “an intentional shift in how families experience support — moving access to services upstream, centering trust, and connecting families to community and evidence-based interventions before crises escalate,” said Davis of the state’s Department of Children and Families. “This approach reflects Connecticut’s commitment to a prevention system that partners with families, honors their strengths, and delivers the right support at the right time — without unnecessary child welfare involvement.”

Prioritize access and availability

In Connecticut and Indiana, families can connect with a community pathway prevention service without first coming into contact with the child welfare system. In Washington, D.C., the child protection agency identifies families coming into the system that can safely be referred out to neighborhood-based collaboratives. In all three jurisdictions, families also can self-refer to prevention services.

Based on the strong advice of families during the planning process, Connecticut contracted with Carelon to be a single point of entry for families that is distinct and upstream from the child protection agency. Families are referred to Carelon by multiple entities, including school personnel, health care providers, community and faith-based organizations, the courts, and 211 (a 24-hour health and human services referral service). Families receive an assessment and are referred to services based on what they identify as their prominent needs. As part of that process, Carelon assesses whether child safety concerns exist, and those are reported to the child protection hotline. At the same time, non-emergency calls to the hotline are screened out and referred to Carelon.

Eligible families across Indiana self-refer or are referred by schools, hospitals, and other social service providers to Healthy Families Indiana for home visiting services. The child protection agency has put administrative processes in place to determine Title IV-E candidacy based on eligibility for the Healthy Families program.

Offer a thoughtful and informed service array

For community pathways to be as effective as possible, child protection agencies should build the capacity of trusted, culturally competent, community partners that are guided by members of the neighborhoods they serve. Christina Andino, a former youth in foster care who works with FosterClub, emphasized the importance of family empowerment.

Washington, D.C.’s ward-based community collaboratives have deep roots in the neighborhoods they serve and refer families to a range of services. Each collaborative engages people with lived experience in the child welfare system to guide their culturally relevant offerings.

Connecticut’s, “no wrong door” approach coordinates an array of providers that reflect and respect the cultural and linguistic needs of families. In addition to offering evidence-based programs currently rated on the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, Connecticut continues to invest in mental, behavioral, and physical health services that have been developed with and for all communities, including traditionally underserved populations. “We know that families need so much more than the evidence-based services in the clearinghouse,” Davis said.

All three jurisdictions consider economic and concrete supports critical to preventing child welfare system involvement, and all have developed partnerships that can connect families to supports like food assistance and legal aid, and financial assistance for basic necessities like housing, utilities, and child care. Title IV-E funds can be used to cover these kinds of costs when economic and concrete supports are a core component of an approved evidence-based service, as is the case with Healthy Families America and several others.

Create a sustainable infrastructure

Building on existing service delivery infrastructure can facilitate implementation of a community pathway strategy. Washington, D.C., leaned on its long-established partnership with the community collaboratives that have been central to the city’s larger prevention strategy framework.

Indiana began by turning to Healthy Families, an evidence-based home visiting program already well-known and serving families across the state. With the bulk of service delivery infrastructure already in place, moving to implementation mainly required the development of new tools and protocols related to eligibility, safety monitoring, and reporting compliance. Indiana leverages Title IV-E funding for administrative costs associated with staff administering the program, as well as for contracts to implement the model, monitor fidelity, give quality assurance and technical assistance, and provide a database for collecting data.

Connecticut used the Family First planning process to advance broad-scale system transformation and build new infrastructure outside of the child protection agency. Though new, the statewide prevention care management entity system built upon prior approaches and structures, including differential response and the state’s system of care for children’s behavioral health.

Effective information technology (IT) infrastructure that ensures family privacy is important to the design of community pathway approaches and should take data collection and reporting methods into careful consideration. A robust firewall is essential to help ensure that information collected about families accessing services through community pathways stays private and does not expose them to negative future consequences, such as increased surveillance by the child protection agency or law enforcement. Indiana’s data system already had much of the necessary functionality and protections in place to move forward under Family First, while Washington, D.C., needed to build out its existing case management system and develop a new portal to support coordination with its five community collaboratives.

Looking ahead

Family First offers a path toward sustainable funding for prevention, and through community pathways, can fundamentally shift how community agencies, rather than systems, address family needs. By leveraging Title IV-E funds, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Indiana and many other jurisdictions are moving services upstream into the community and providing a roadmap for other states and Tribes to follow. Learning from these early implementers can help others anticipate challenges and design for long-term success as they develop or amend their Family First plans.

1 As of January 2026, 12 Title IV-E Prevention Plans that include a community pathway approach have been approved by the Children’s Bureau: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Additional states, including Oregon, Nebraska, and Washington have submitted plans that include a community pathway approach.

2 In FY2023, about 4.4 million reports were made to child protection hotlines (involving approximately 7.8 million children), with just under half of those reports (48%) screened in for further investigation or assessment.

Child Maltreatment 2023. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau (2025).

3 The original content of this brief was informed by conversations with Clare Anderson, senior policy fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children, on March 22, 2022; Christina Andino, FosterClub, on May 18, 2022; Natalie Craver, deputy director of the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, on May 18, 2022; JoShonda Guerrier, administrator for clinical and community consultation and support services at Connecticut Department of Children and Families, on May 23, 2022; Timothy Phipps, parent mentor at Morrison Child and Family Services, on May 18, 2022; David Reed, deputy director of child welfare services at Indiana Department Of Child Services, on May 9, 2022; Krista Thomas, senior policy fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children, on April 25, 2022. Updates to this brief were informed by conversations with Hannah Robinson, prevention services manager, and Austin Hollabaugh, assistant deputy director of services at Indiana Department of Child Services on October 2, 2025; Sharafdeen Ibraheem, deputy director, DC Child and Family Services Agency, on October 7, 2025; Frank Gregory, administrator of children’s behavioral health community service system, and Sharon Davis, director of family and community services, Connecticut Department of Children and Families, on December 12, 2025; and Gabrielle Hall, assistant vice president, and Andrea Goetz, executive director, Carelon, on December 12, 2025.