July/August 2019Vol. 20, No. 6Webinar Highlights Funding for Interventions Through Family First Law
A webinar from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation highlights the funding streams available under the Family First Prevention Services Act to implement and maintain evidence-based child welfare programs. The Family First Act provides funding for evidence-based family preservation services to prevent children from entering foster care. The law shifts funding from foster care to prevention and family preservation services and prioritizes family-based placements when children require out-of-home care.
"Funding Evidence-Based Programs in Child Welfare: Implications of the Family First Prevention Services Act" is the second webinar in a four-part series called Leading With Evidence: Informing Practice With Research. The webinar highlights implementation efforts and lessons learned from nine child welfare systems (New York City; Allegheny County, PA; Catawba County, NC; Colorado; Connecticut; New Jersey; North Carolina; Ohio; and Washington) that have funded and sustained evidence-based programs. The most common type of evidence-based programs implemented by these systems pertain to prevention (e.g., Triple P, Safe Care, Strengthening Families), behavior management (e.g., functional family therapy, multisystemic therapy), and therapeutic services (e.g., child-parent psychotherapy, parent-child interaction therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy).
The webinar also presents a case study of a North Carolina program that has allocated an increasing amount of resources to help families stay together.
The webinar is available at https://www.aecf.org/blog/funding-evidence-based-programs-in-child-welfare-with-the-family-first.