Child Welfare

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Child welfare is a continuum of services designed to ensure that children are safe and that families have the necessary support to care for children successfully. These services are provided by a range of entities; public child welfare agencies often collaborate with private agencies, community-based organizations, and other public agencies to ensure that families receive the services they need, such as supportive child care, parenting classes, in-home family preservation services, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment. FPG's work in child welfare encompasses biological, environmental, and other factors related to ensuring the safety and well-being of children and families.

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A commitment to vulnerable populations and the systems designed to assist them is shared by FPG Implementation Specialist Lena Harris and FPG Senior Implementation Specialist Robin Jenkins. This is reflected in their work providing implementation support to The Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice at the University of Connecticut Health Center.

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States have many policy levers to build civil rights infrastructure to codify children’s civil and human rights. This begins with adding explicit protections to state constitutions and statutes, but can continue through legislation appropriating funding to defend civil rights and vigorous civil rights oversight and enforcement by state-level offices. A recent report reviews these and other state and local levers to protect the civil rights of children.

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Lena Harris, MSW, is an implementation specialist with The Impact Center at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). She has been a strong advocate for children and youth in foster care for several years. She is passionate about empowering children and families to achieve improved wellbeing outcomes, with a focus on those involved with the child welfare system and the systems that interact with it.

Current Projects

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Building an Ecosystem for Transformative Systems Change for Young Children and Families

The goal of this planning grant is to design a new study focused on deeper, more meaningful investments across three core domains in Head Start. It will result in a policy scan and a preliminary feasibility of an innovative program where there is a laser focus on the trifecta of health, wealth, and education, moving beyond “light touch” impact on families' lives to transformative impact on communities.

Equity Research Action Coalition

Exploring legal status and race as determinants of Black immigrant maternal health

In collaboration with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and African Family Health Organization, community-based organizations that engage and educate African American and Black immigrant communities, we will conduct an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research to identify barriers and facilitators to positive birth outcomes for Black mothers with a focus on attention to health care access through focus groups and interviews and conduct causal inference analyses using extant data (i.e., Vital Statistics) to examine the effect of 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act on the birthing outcomes of Black immigrants.

Implementation Support for Ready for School, Ready for Life Guilford County

Implementation Support for Ready for School, Ready for Life Guilford County is a collaborative effort to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Through the proposed project, The Impact Center at FPG’s support team will provide deep implementation support focused on partnership and program implementation activities among partners involved with the effort’s “Routes to Ready” initiative. Additionally, the support team will identify and support organizational development needs for the effort’s community backbone organization, “Ready Ready.” Finally, the support team will support Ready Ready’s exploration and planning for Triple P expansion in Guilford County, including brokering connections with regional and statewide Triple P partners and systems.

Intermediary Supports for Statewide Triple P Implementation and Scale-Up

Successful adoption, implementation, improvement, and scale of the Triple P system across the Carolinas holds the promise of improving child health outcomes, including reduced rates of child abuse, reduced out of home foster care placement, and fewer hospital visits due to child abuse injuries. Continued collaboration and co-creation is the foundation for ongoing work to provide proactive and responsive implementation support, system-wide support and dissemination of effective implementation approaches, and develop the team of professionals providing these essential supports.

Mental Health, Earlier (MHE) ALACRITY Research Center

The Mental Health, Earlier ALACRITY Research Center addresses a key element of the NIMH 2020-2025 Strategic Plan Goal 3: Strive for Prevention and Cures: advancing preventive interventions in a developmentally appropriate manner as early in life and illness course as possible, to prevent or forestall mental illnesses and associated dysfunction.

Starting Them off on the Right Path: Utilizing Home Visiting to Address Race-based Trauma and Support Children's Racial Identity Formation

The purpose of this project is to gather perspectives from current Parents As Teachers families and parent educators. This is a developmental evaluation to understand how Parents as Teachers (PAT) could address race-based trauma and stressors and support the positive racial identity formation for young children.

The California Abundant Birth Project Evaluation: Advancing Birth Equity Through Guaranteed Income for Pregnant People

The California Abundant Birth Project (CA-ABP) is a guaranteed income program for pregnant people at greatest risk of birth inequities in five California counties (San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Riverside, and Los Angeles), funded by the State of California, municipal governments, and philanthropic funding. The California Abundant Birth Project will provide unconditional, monthly income supplements during pregnancy and postpartum to randomly selected participants, with the goal of curbing financial stress and promoting healthy pregnancy outcomes. The goal of this project is to evaluate the impact of this guaranteed income program on birthing outcomes, maternal and child health, and children’s early outcomes.

Using Implementation Science in Supporting NC's Division of Child and Family Wellbeing Child Behavioral Health Team

The DCFW Implementation Support Project for the DHHS Child Behavioral Health Leadership Team (federally funded component) and its projects continues to build on the existing partnership that the Impact Center has with the CBH team at DHHS. The partnership creates an implementation science, practice-based set of activities and capacity building efforts in support of a multi-tiered policy/governance, program (e.g., EBP) support, and delivery system across North Carolina. Beginning July 01, 2023, the Impact Center will continue to work alongside and receive directions from DCFW Leadership, embed implementation science best practices within the Team, its projects, and support system partners where directed.

Virginia's Evidence-Based Practices Initiative: Transformation Zone

Virginia's Evidence-Based Practice Initiative is seeking support for capacity development in best practices of implementation science. Multiple agencies within the state of Virginia are collaborating in their efforts to foster and facilitate the use of evidence within their local communities. The collaborating state agencies include the Office of Children Services (OCS), Department of Social Services (DSS), Department of Education (VDOE), Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Services (DBHDS), and Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS). A state leadership team comprised of representation from these various state agencies has been formed to design and lead the initiative. The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN; http://nirn.fpg.unc.edu) and partners within the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute propose providing a blended model of training, coaching, and consultation supports to support the implementation of the Virginia Evidence-Based Practice Initiative through a Transformation Zone approach. Equity will be centered and explicitly attended to in all aspects of services provided.

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

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