Child welfare should start well before foster care

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For decades, we have largely measured child welfare by what happens after a child enters foster care. But perhaps one of the most important measures of success is how many children never have to enter foster care at all.

Child welfare must always require a strong safety net for children who cannot safely remain at home. But a successful system should not focus exclusively on what happens after a family reaches a crisis point.

What if, for example, we could intervene with families in crisis well before foster care was needed? What if we were able to intervene in ways that kept families safely together?

This is precisely the approach the Children’s Network of Hillsborough County has been taking in partnership with the Florida Department of Children and Families and our valued community partners.

How do we do it? Through early intervention, strengthening parents and caregivers, connecting families with the right services and confronting challenges before they become crises that require separation.

Since Children’s Network of Hillsborough County began serving as the community-based care lead agency in July 2022, family preservation has been central to our work. Through our Intensive Family Services Team (IFST), we work alongside our state and local partners to offer services aimed at strengthening and empowering families so parents and caregivers can safely care for their children.

It’s working. In just five years, we’ve served more than 10,000 children and youth and supported more than 6,700 referrals with critical intervention and support. We’ve reduced the number of children requiring our supervision by 47% and the number of youths placed in residential group care by 30%.

We have also seen an overall reduction in removals through Child Protective Investigations while expanding the resources available to support families whose needs are increasingly complex. This includes improved services for families requiring substance abuse support and for young people who have been human trafficked.

Recently, Children’s Network of Hillsborough County participated alongside the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and other partners in Operation Statewide Shield, which resulted in the recovery of 163 children across Florida, including 48 children in Hillsborough County.

Efforts like these underscore the importance of collaboration across child welfare, law enforcement and community organizations for identifying vulnerable children, connecting them with appropriate services and helping families move toward greater stability and safety.

Of course, despite our early intervention efforts to keep families together, foster care is still often necessary for the safety of the child. When children do need to enter such care, the same philosophy guides our work: preserve family connections whenever it is safe and possible and find a permanent, loving home as quickly as we can.

Today, 54% of youth in care in Hillsborough County are placed with relatives, helping children maintain important family and community connections. Since the summer of 2022, we have reunified more than 1,299 families and finalized more than 1,626 adoptions.

In the end, a strong child welfare system must be measured both by the quality of care and support provided to children who require the protection of foster care, as well as by our ability to help families remain safely together.

While we know there is still so much work to be done, we are also confident we are on the right track. Keeping children safe and keeping families together are not competing goals. When done wll, they are intentionally part of the same goal.

Terri Balliet is CEO of Children’s Network of Hillsborough County.