A project of the Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families Federal Grant, Children’s Bureau
“These grants embody the Children’s Bureau’s commitment to developing new and improved child welfare strategies that are focused on preventing the maltreatment of children by their caregiver, and as a result, creating environments in which families can thrive and children are free from harm. The child welfare field has wholeheartedly embraced this focus, as evidenced by an unusually large number of funding applications representing every state in the country. I am incredibly encouraged about the future direction of child welfare in our country.”
— Jerry Milner, Former Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau
In 2019, Partnership for Strong Families (PSF) received a five-year federal grant from the Children’s Bureau to evaluate and refine our network of Resource Centers and establish a new center in Lake City, our NorthStar Family Resource Center which opened in March of 2021. The Resource Center provides services and resources to families that build upon their strengths with the ultimate goal of keeping every local child safe from abuse or neglect. Through this project’s implementation and evaluation activities, it is projected that opportunities for improvement will be observed and put into practice, thus helping us to refine our service model.
Funding provided by the Children’s Bureau through the Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families Grant emphasizes the need for a collaborative, community-based approach to serving children and families. Likewise, PSF’s Resource Center Model is rooted in the belief that services provided at our Resource Centers must be responsive to the local neighborhoods and communities they serve.
Proposed Project Activities and Strategies (5-Year Plan)
- Evaluate our current Resource Center Model.
- Refine the Model based on evaluation findings.
- Bring the Resource Center Model to Lake City (by early 2021.)
- Create opportunities for sharing and replication across our community, state and nation.
Project Goals and Objectives
- Refine the existing Resource Center Model in a manner responsive to the results generated from a rigorous program evaluation in Gainesville and community-based needs assessment in Lake City.
- Integrate and strengthen service activities within each Resource Center that are linked to protective factors and represent a meaningful multi-agency/multi-system community collaboration.
- Enhance the well-being of children and families and increase the protective factors in families within identified historically underserved communities.
- Increase the presence of effective primary and secondary child maltreatment prevention strategies within the communities served by PSF’s Resource Centers.
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