Learn how we can support your community in its efforts to implement the Safe Babies approach.
Breaking Silos: Collaborative efforts to support infants and parents in the child welfare system
Collaboration across roles in early childhood systems and guided by the Safe Babies approach is critical to ensuring the well-being of infants and their parents. In the child welfare system, where families often face compounding challenges, coordinated efforts can prevent deeper system involvement and promote family stability. Each role—whether in courtrooms, agencies, or community settings—plays a unique and essential part in achieving these outcomes.
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By working together, early childhood leaders can address systemic barriers, address inequities, prioritize developmental needs, and foster positive, long-term impacts for families.
Centering families through Family Team Meetings
Family Team Meetings unite parents and professionals to collaboratively plan for a child’s future. They empower parents, focus on infants’ developmental needs, and connect families to vital services, reducing system re-entry.
Impact:
- Enhances parental confidence
- Improves quality decision-making
- Builds a network of support tailored to each family’s needs
Community coordination to bridge support
Community Coordinators bridge service gaps, ensuring families receive timely, evidence-based support. They prioritize children’s developmental needs and amplify parents’ voices, connecting them to essential resources like mental health care, housing, and substance use treatment.
Impact:
- Families are better supported with comprehensive services
- Reduces stressors that can lead to system involvement
- Promotes stability and healing
Judicial leadership sets a collaborative tone
Judges and judicial officers act as catalysts for system-wide collaboration by fostering trauma-informed, solution-focused court environments. Through frequent oversight and clear expectations for collaborative Family Team Meetings, they ensure that families are engaged and supported. Judges and judicial officers also drive systemic improvements by addressing barriers, encouraging cross-sector partnerships, and promoting equitable access to resources.
Impact:
- Ensure timely service delivery
- Promotes equitable outcomes
- Creates a supportive and trauma-responsive environment for families to thrive
Child welfare leadership drives systems change
Child welfare leaders prioritize infants and toddlers by fostering cross-sector alignment, emphasizing developmental needs, and promoting trauma-responsive, family-centered systems. Their focus on equity drives systemic improvements.
Impact:
- Leadership-driven changes enhance service quality
- Reduces disparities
- Ensures families are supported at every level
Building a network with Active Community Teams (ACTs)
Active Community Teams unite stakeholders to improve equitable access to services. By fostering trust and collaboration, these teams address systemic inequities, develop sustainable funding strategies and advocate for policy change. This community-wide approach ensures that services are integrated and accessible before families reach a crisis point.
Impact:
- Strengthen community networks
- Reduce systemic gaps
- Create preventive supports that benefit families long-term
Driving sustained impact with Site Implementation Teams
Site Implementation Teams provide operational oversight, align policies and ensure Safe Babies practices are applied effectively. By supporting frontline professionals and fostering continuous improvement, these teams enable successful implementation.
Impact:
- Creates sustainable systems that prioritize child and family needs
- Ensures the long-term success of the Safe Babies approach
Scaling success through policy and funding
State Advisory Groups align policies and funding streams, focus on health equity and sustain initiatives like the Safe Babies approach, expanding their impact and fostering community collaboration.
Impact:
- Ensure sustainable support for families by embedding practices into policies
- Foster public and private partnerships
- Champion initiatives that support family well-being
