Approaches to Collaborative Partnerships in the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Initiatives

The goal of the CWCC initiative is to fund collaborative projects that address local barriers and provide a continuum of supports to promote child and family well-being and strengthen protective factors, ultimately leading to fewer new referrals to child welfare and more families staying together. While each CWCC project shared this goal, they proposed a diverse range of strategies to achieve their desired outcomes.

ACF’s CWCC initiative funded collaborative efforts across the United States to prevent child maltreatment and reduce community-level rates of child abuse, neglect, and out-of-home placements. Key findings related to approaches to partnership in these collaborative efforts included the following: 

• On average, each grantee partnered with 20 organizations in their community, but the number of partner organizations varied widely — from 9 to 65 organizations. Community-serving organizations (e.g., community-based non-profits and health-related specialists) comprised roughly half of the partners across all projects.
• Grantees identified partners at each stage of the grant process, from writing the proposal through implementation. 
• In addition to leveraging existing relationships and soliciting partners through formal selection processes such as Requests for Proposals, grantees also used data to identify partners and solicited community input from individuals with lived experience and local service providers.
• Grantees and their partners described how factors both external and internal to their CWCC projects influenced their success in building and maintaining strong partnerships: 
  • Key external factors included: Collaboration and coordination dynamics among family-serving systems and organizations within the community, partners’ organizational capacity to participate (e.g., time, resources), and the level of mutual trust across partners. 
  • Key internal factors included: Frequent and clear communication, clear roles and responsibilities, strong leadership from the grantee, and shared decision-making.
• Overall grantees and their partners were very satisfied with their partnerships during the project.

This brief uses qualitative data collected from (1) annual site visits with in-depth interviews with CWCC project leadership, key partners and staff, (2) a collaborative survey administered annually to grantees and partners, and (3) information from grantee documents such as original grant applications, semi-annual progress reports, and summaries of each grantee created by the TA team. These data sources describe the approaches to collaborative partnerships used in CWCC projects and important lessons learned along the way.

Collaborative partnerships are essential for community-driven strategies that prevent child maltreatment, yet they present complexities that must be navigated. Interviews with CWCC grantees and their partners suggested several key ingredients to successful partnerships:

• Structured and inclusive communication during and between project meetings. 
• Clearly communicated roles and expectations of partners. 
• Ongoing relationship development with new and existing partners. 
• A shared understanding of the project’s mission, goals, and strategies for prevention. 
• Strong project leaders. 

As communities seek to build and strengthen collaborative partnerships that incorporate these key ingredients, communities can benefit from other lessons learned by the CWCC projects:

• Collaborations take time and ongoing attention to trust and relationship development.
• Allocating project funding to compensate staff and leaders’ contributions to the project can help ensure dedicated, ongoing participation of partner organizations. 
• It is important to think creatively about who to can engage as partners and move beyond the traditional players to include a wider range of perspectives and expertise. 
• Acknowledging and actively addressing imbalances of power (e.g., between families and systems, and between smaller and larger organizations) is essential to building more inclusive coalitions to prevent child maltreatment and to elevating the voices and solutions of those most directly impacted by the child welfare system.
   

McKlindon, A., Schachtner, R., Flannigan, A. (2024). Approaches to Partnership in the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Initiative. OPRE Report 2024-103, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.

Tano, C., Layzer, C., Hyra, A., Cook, R., and Blocklin, M. (2021). Community Prevention of Child Maltreatment: Lessons learned and Promising Practices During the COVID-19 Pandemic. OPRE Report 2023-11, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Cook, R., Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2023). An Introduction to the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Grantees and Strategies. OPRE Report # 2023-332, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Layzer, C., Blocklin, M., Schachtner, R., & Cook, R. (2023). Child Welfare Community Collaborations Cross-Site Process Evaluation Design and Methods. OPRE Report # 2023-334, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Cook, R., Cusick, J., & Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2023). Child Welfare Community Collaborations Projects at a Glance. OPRE Report # 2023-333, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Naylon, K., Cook, R., Schachtner, R., Malm, K., Flannigan, A., & Blocklin, M. (2024). Supporting Equity Through Child Welfare Community Collaborations. OPRE Report 2024-102, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.