Our Strategic and Racial Equity Plan calls on us to eliminate racial disproportionalities, improve the quality and intention of our practice and availability of provider services, and prevent harm to children and youth – as far upstream as possible.
Thriving Families is made up of multiple projects and initiatives in the child welfare space that focus on prevention, supporting families and staff, and strengthening our practice.
The Thriving Families Initiative will improve outcomes for families by:
- Safely reducing the number of children in out-of-home placements
- Supporting families so children/youth remain safely at home
- Placing children with kin/relatives, if they cannot remain safely at home
- Ensuring all placements are safe, stable, and support permanency
Projects
The vision for this project is to develop a comprehensive child welfare assessment system that is fully integrated with the Family Practice Model and meets the needs of our caseworkers and the children, youth, and families we serve.
The vision of the Caregiver Supports Project is to implement a continuum of placement resources that enable safe, stable, and supported placements for children in the care of DCYF. The continuum will increase access to caregiver supports and align supports to the diverse needs of youth and children in out-of-home placement.
For more information, email dcyf.caregiversupports@dcyf.wa.gov.
The goal for the D.S. settlement is to increase placement stability and achieve a youth and family-centered, culturally and trauma-informed system of placements and supports for children and youth with behavioral health and developmental disabilities.
This project aims to implement long-overdue historic reforms to help keep children safety with their families and avoid the traumatic experience of entering foster care. This includes development of pathways to expand services for families to access services in community without child welfare involvement.
If funded, this project will deliver a Community-Based Family Reconciliation Services (FRS) model. DCYF will implement and evaluate three early implementation sites in King, Pierce, and Yakima counties, with community-based (contracted) FRS providers.
This project will revise the Indian Child Welfare (ICW) Policies and Procedures Manual and applicable DCYF ICW forms and ICW trainings to strengthen practice in alignment with the federal and state Indian Child Welfare Act to achieve better outcomes for Native American children and families.
This project will create a simplified, streamlined process to license kinship caregivers and unlock previously unavailable financial support.
This project trains all caseload-carrying DCYF child welfare staff to fidelity in Motivational Interviewing to facilitate positive change through engagement with children, youth, and families, which will reduce removals and lengths of stay in out-of-home placements.
This project supports increased service delivery across the state, a centralized and standardized system of provider availability and access that is robust, supportive, and culturally responsive.