access to prevention services. Presently, these secondary prevention needs go largely unaddressed, even as data shows a considerable number of these families subsequently return to child welfare’s attention — often at an increased level of risk, as demonstrated by the DCYF analysis below.
We recommend developing a secondary prevention strategy, in which the DCYF workforce connects families who encounter the child welfare system but are not appropriate for deeper system involvement with voluntary preventive supports. This requires increasing the expectations of and skills for family engagement among DCYF’s screening and investigatory workforce. Developing DCYF workforce capacity for effective family engagement requires a layered strategy: reducing turnover and retaining a more seasoned workforce to avoid oversized caseloads; decreasing unwieldy or unnecessary reporting requirements to refocus time on family engagement; and collaborating with union leadership if collective bargaining is needed for changing job expectations. Finally, improving secondary prevention will require clear and easy mechanisms to connect families, whether directly to preventive supports when needs are clear or to navigation assistance for more complex, sustained needs.
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