Who’s in the Child’s Corner: Bringing Family, Community, and Child Protective Services Together for the Protection of Children

Abstract

With the enactment of the US Family First Prevention Services Act (FFA) in 2018 came a renewed focus on the types and quality of services provided to families involved in the child protective service (CPS) system. However, identifying and disseminating evidence-based approaches is only one part of what is needed to protect children from harm. The role of family, school, and community is often de-emphasized, yet these systems typically have a greater capacity to protect children than formal service providers. The authors call for a rigorous multisystemic approach to the protection of children, one that pays attention to children at risk of harm and those who are involved in formal child protection systems because they have experienced maltreatment. A multisystemic approach would focus largely on a child’s natural ecology (i.e., family, school, community) and include a much broader array of possible interventions. This article draws from the authors’ experiences of implementing ecologically-based treatment models based on multisystemic therapy, including the Neighborhood Solutions Project (NS) and Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN). Although designed primarily for formal intervention (i.e., youth at risk of community violence and families who are experiencing child abuse and neglect), the MST-related broad systemic approach, including its core treatment principles and an analytic process has wider applicability. For example, the MST processes were central to meeting community needs targeting health and well-being in a rural village in the eastern region of Ghana where no child protection system existed. Likewise, the MST-related approach is applicable to a fuller spectrum of family needs (e.g., families at risk of but not experiencing maltreatment) and to a wider array of professionals and laypeople working with child protection-involved/at risk for involvement families. Bringing family, community, and child protective services (i.e., multiple systems) together through a shared vision for the protection of children may be the most effective way to ultimately keep all children safe.