“The community must recognize that protecting children and creating resilient families is everyone’s job.”
Every April, our nation observes National Child Abuse Prevention Month to raise public awareness of child abuse and neglect. This focus is placed on building strong families and communities through support, resources, and education that spotlights prevention rather than intervention.
While the foster care system plays a vital role in providing kids a safe place for a season, prevention is imperative because it aims to address the root causes of child maltreatment and family separation, ultimately preventing children from experiencing trauma and ensuring their safety and well-being.
In 2022, state and local child welfare agencies collectively spent $31.4 billion on various child welfare services, including foster care placement, child investigations, adoption, and guardianship assistance. However, only 14% was allocated to prevention services. This figure does not include the $50 billion spent on indirect costs such as early intervention, mental health and health care, emergency/transitional housing, juvenile delinquency, adult criminal legal, and lost worker productivity costs.
This is why we exist. Safe Families partners with entire communities to mobilize a movement of volunteers dedicated to keeping children safe and families together by providing family-focused support, stabilization, and strengthening. Our model has been at the forefront of changing the child welfare landscape as we seek to come alongside of parents wrapping family-like support through caring, compassionate communities before a crisis occurs.
In our befriending of families facing adversities, and the very act of opening our hearts and homes to those who were otherwise strangers, we can offer spaces of safety and strength. We offer friendship, shoulder to shoulder, and we do not “look down.” Instead, we say, “Lean on us for now.” We seek to see the strengths families present as opportunities. The Safe Families model is simple and beautiful. By providing belonging and community, parents can find hope and healing in knowing they are truly seen, heard, and accepted.
We have had the privilege to support over 45,000 children and families with a 97% parent reunification rate. Safe Families for Children is uniquely positioned as an evidence-based answer for prevention in local communities. Our model has been proven to be:
- Safe and effective prevention for deflecting families from foster care,
- Safe service when children remain in their homes during an investigation, and
- Safe and effective intervention for parent reunification with children.
There is an urgency to prevention. Every year, close to 400,000 children have languished in the system, with far too few licensed foster families to take them in. Of those 400,000, it is estimated that up to 70% of reported cases could be deterred if families had the proper relational support and caring community to surround them.
At the same time, social isolation and parental stress continue to climb, with “48% of parents reporting that their stress is ‘completely overwhelming’ most days,” highlighting a serious public health concern, according to the most recent advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General.
One partnering parent recently shared, “There is no way I could have kept my family together without the support of Safe Families. I was completely overwhelmed with mental health issues that led to an addiction problem. I had no family or close friends, and I had nowhere to go when I hit rock bottom. Through the staff, my amazing circle of support, and the church, I got the assistance I needed to address my mental health and addiction issues, find a job, and re-establish housing for my family. Now, I feel like I have a family and some people I know care about me; I am not alone on my recovery journey.”
This is just one example of how lives are being changed by families serving families. Will you join us in our prevention efforts? If you are a current volunteer, would you open your heart and home again? If you were once involved but are no longer involved, will you consider renewing your background check to support a family or host children? If hosting is not an option, would you share the mission in your community, serve on a Leadership Council, provide much-needed resources, or financially support Safe Families for Children? There truly is a role for everyone!
Investing in prevention rather than solely focusing on intervention can yield significant long-term benefits and cost savings. It addresses issues proactively rather than reacting to problems after they arise. Most importantly, when we invest in prevention, children can be spared the pain and trauma of families being separated right from the start.
Join the movement and invest in helping keep children safe and families together! Click here for a copy of Investing in Prevention.
