design community-driven solutions that increase family resilience and reduce rates of child maltreatment and entry into foster care. Their work included requesting and reviewing DCYF data, which not only informed local planning but led to a statewide prevention data dashboard. They also collected and sought — and continued to seek — family stories, reporting on themes across their four sites to inform statewide prevention planning. 8 The early learnings from Strengthening Families Locally have highlighted the experiences of families and children seeking services and support within their communities. This endeavor is supported through funding from the Administration for Children, Youth and Families to work with community members in Bremerton, Port Angeles/Sequim, Spokane, and Stevens counties. Partnerships with community organizations, government, tribes, schools, families, and volunteers in these service areas are tasked with designing community-driven solutions to prevent child abuse and strengthen community supports for families. Within DCYF, constituent outreach and input efforts are organized by the Community Engagement Team. This team spearheads communications with external partners and supports numerous advisory bodies across the state. DCYF has a positive record of engaging with advisory groups — including councils they convene as well as via partnership with community-led bodies. These advisory and governance structures have been a major mechanism for harnessing the power and perspective of lived experience to inform several DCYF strategies and actions. Recent areas of DCYF reform that were co-designed with constituents with lived experience include service arrays for transition-age youth, development of kinship licensing portals, and determination of results-based accountability measures in provider contracts for independent living and placement services. Further, the collection of projects under the DCYF Thriving Families initiative — all bodies of work with significant planning or redesign elements — all include substantive input from impacted community members. It should be noted that further examination of the through lines between the Community Engagement Team and DCYF is necessary to better understand the ways in which this team can support FFPSA and prevention efforts. For example, there may be facilitation or planning opportunities that would allow the Community Engagement Team to take a more proactive and lead role. Much of the current community engaging relative to FFPSA and prevention is led by DCYF. It is recognized that limitations may occur because of limited resources and competing priorities of the Community Engagement Team as well.
8 Clarke, B. (2024). Strengthening Families Locally (SFL): Preliminary Report on Sensemaker Themes from Exploratory Analysis.
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