1. Family Supports
All families – including birth families, kin, adoptive families, and foster families -- experience challenges raising their children, and most need support at times. Often, families are able to find the support they need within their own informal networks of relatives, friends, neighbors, faith communities, and community-based organizations. However, if these informal supports are not available or adequate to counter the risks that children and families experience, families need access to a richer array of resources for protecting and providing for their children.
Parents who become involved with the child welfare system are more likely than others to experience poverty, substance abuse, mental health problems, inadequate housing, domestic violence, or a combination of these problems. Children are more likely to have emotional, behavioral, physical or other disabilities. Policies and services that help families address these conditions can in turn improve their capacity to meet their children’s developmental needs.
Research has determined that investment in evidence-based support for families experiencing difficulty caring for their children helps to improve child safety and well-being. Access to assistance that strengthens the capacity of parents and other caregivers produces benefits that ripple through the lives of many children. With adequate public investment in the effective supports described in this section, families often are able to care for their children without further services, and child abuse, neglect and other negative outcomes are prevented.
Specific state policy options are presented for each of the following areas:
1.1 Investment in evidence-based prevention programs
1.3 Parenting education and training
1.4 Respite and short-term crisis care