This article originally appeared in the March-April 2000 issue of the Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Networks of support

Community Partnerships for Protecting Children weave stronger community ties to help troubled families

By Kathy Barrows

Sandra Durham works as a community services coordinator in a housing project in Jacksonville, Florida. When she received word that Karen (not her real name), a mother in the project, had been jailed on charges of child neglect, the news wasn't all bad. On their own, the mother's neighbors had rallied and were caring for her four children.

Drawing on relationships she had developed through her work with the Jacksonville Community Partnership for Protecting Children, Durham called a meeting of neighbors and service agency representatives that evening. She learned that when Karen's teenage babysitter had taken off, a feuding neighbor had called the police and reported neglect.

The people at the meeting planned how to care for the children while Karen was in jail. Two families committed to keeping the children—ages seven, six, two, and seven months—for two weeks. Local agencies such as the food bank and the local "full service" school offered food, clothing, and the all-important diapers.

Since the local child welfare agency, the Department of Child and Families (DCF), had no record of the family and the kids were safe, explains Durham, "We took it upon ourselves to let it stay like that." The kids remained in a familiar environment, and within six days, Karen was back with her children, "That's the basic story," says Sandra. "We call it a miracle."

The "miracle" continued after Karen's return. Karen acknowledged she was having difficulties and could use help. It turned out that she had had previous encounters with DCF in a different county. So after she returned home she participated in a planning meeting arranged by the Community Partnership. At the meeting, another family agreed to mentor her in nurturing and parenting skills.

Committed to getting herself off government assistance, Karen is now in a job-training program, with a new-found interest in computers. Her son is receiving counseling at school, and she successfully maneuvered her family through a bout of chicken pox. Had it not been for the Community Partnership, says Sandra, "We couldn't have had the team of people" to get Karen through her problems without involving DCF, which might have meant placing the children in foster care.

Stories of community child protection, like Karen's, are what the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's Community Partnerships for Protecting Children program is all about. Since 1995 the Clark Foundation has provided technical assistance and seed money to the Jacksonville Community Partnership and similar programs in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; St. Louis, Missouri; and Louisville, Kentucky. These pilot programs are developing a model for a preventive approach to reducing child abuse and neglect. The strategy is to broaden the responsibility for child safety beyond Child Protective Services (CPS) to the larger community.

Creating community networks

In Community Partnerships, CPS workers move out of central offices and into the community. Stationed in community centers or "full service" schools, they get to know and work with school staff and community service providers and forge ties with agencies such as the local domestic violence shelter, the YWCA, and substance-abuse programs.

Donna Johnston, a community liaison worker at the Community Partnership in Louisville, says, "We're all pieces of a puzzle. If we can get our services to fit together, then once we've interconnected, that completed puzzle is like a mat or a foundation. We give that family something that they can rest on."

For families who need help, like Karen's, Community Partnership staff invite family, neighbors, and service providers to plan an "Individualized Course of Action." These plans draw on the resources of major community organizations but also "informal support systems" such as churches, child care centers, and individual concerned neighbors. Some families who go through this process already have open CPS cases; others are referred by neighbors. But Al Walker, executive director of the Jacksonville Community Partnership, says, "The language of the community has changed. More people call to report cases of child neglect, not from a tattletale attitude of 'Let me tell you about so and so,' but from a real place of caring."

Learning to be neighbors

Creating community networks for supporting families isn't easy, says Walker, a former DCF family services counselor. Often parents perceive CPS as "child-snatchers," while CPS workers see only the flaws of parents. Many neighborhoods are naturally mistrustful of what they see as outside intervention in their communities. And finally, there are "turf" issues about the roles of different service agencies within a common area.

"As I see it," Walker says, "a lot of people don't realize how important saying hello and talking to someone is. The first step is for people to learn how to become neighbors."

For the approximately 7,000 residents of the five housing projects targeted by the Community Partnership, one way to learn about becoming neighbors is to attend the monthly "Community-Family Awareness Meetings." At these meetings, co-chaired by a social worker like Durham and a resident of the community, families learn about job training and health resources and meet with community leaders.

In addition, at Karen's Washington Heights complex, 15 or 20 families get together weekly to watch movies they've chosen for the Friday Night Family Film Fest. Clark Foundation funds pay for refreshments, a large screen TV, VCR, and videotapes. Most importantly, the idea for the film fest came from the residents themselves.

The Casey Foundation allocated small grants of $5,000 to the community to come up with innovative ways to make children safer. Volunteers, often CPS workers, help residents write up their ideas—a new relationship between CPS and the community.

Events like the monthly meetings and the Film Fests help create a community of concerned neighbors so that when problems like Karen's arise, a neighborhood network of people and agencies can come together and take action.

Eventually, leaders emerge from the community to spearhead other projects and serve on larger steering committees which help to govern the Community Partnership. For example, one resident volunteered to become a registered child care provider and opened up her apartment as a safe house for victims of domestic violence. This slow, careful community-building fosters what the Clark Foundation calls "local collaborative decision-making."

Support systems

Evaluation of the Clark model is still in progress, but stories like Karen's attest to its success. Marno Cook Batterson, coordinator for on-site technical assistance, says, "For me, it's clear that the model is providing the use of informal supports to keep families and kids safe. If the work of human service professionals is tailored to families individually, when we include families in our support system, we get something that lasts beyond agencies."

For Sandra Durham, building a support system at the Washington Heights housing project in Jacksonville is especially satisfying. As a child she lived in Washington Heights with her mother, who was on welfare at the time. Now a professional social worker, she still remembers the day four years ago when her supervisor called to say there was a job opening at Washington Heights.

She says, "My thing is to bring the community back."

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