Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation Initiative

Collaborating to Prevent Abuse and Promote Hope

Related Ideas

Building a New Model for Child Well-being

The current child welfare system, with surveillance at its center and maltreatment concerns as its trigger, too often causes lasting harm to children and families and misses the opportunity to support them in their community and help them thrive.

We believe there is a better way to prevent abuse and neglect.

Launched by the Doris Duke Foundation, Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation Initiative, or “OPT-In for Families,” builds on work done across the country to create and test a meaningful alternative to the child welfare system—one that moves from a punitive system focused on assessing whether children should be removed from their homes to a prevention-oriented well-being system that leads to better outcomes across a child's life.

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Supporting those leaders across the country who are daring to imagine anew the child welfare system.”

Sam Gill

CEO, Doris Duke Foundation

Creating Engaging Opportunities for Families

OPT-In for Families builds on data, community insight and the perspectives of people with lived experience. Research shows that child welfare, by design, addresses acute safety issues but does not meaningfully help families thrive.

Access
Each selected site will focus on families at an early signal of need.

Engagement
With compassion and respect, community-based programs that are outside the child welfare system will then reach out and engage these families.

Navigation
A trusted community-based person will help families navigate services, so the search for help doesn’t itself become a hardship.

Support
We will provide funding so selected sites can implement a strategy that has been shown effective: providing concrete material support directly to families.

Innovating and Collaborating to Drive Change

Transforming the child welfare system is hard work, and we must meet it with the core elements of successfully implementing innovation. OPT-In for Families provides each site with intensive on-the-ground program design, implementation and research support to develop their new initiatives. We provide start-up support, including staff, technology and expertise, in addition to flexible financial support for families.

To help the demonstration sites meet the challenge of implementing innovation while continuing daily operations, OPT-In for Families:

Provides targeted resources and dedicated staff
Coordinates closely with other relevant initiatives and other technical assistance providers within the selected site
Makes a strategic and time-limited investment to support the creation and evaluation of the innovation
Supports sites to scale and carry forward the work by maximizing government funding streams that are designed to benefit children and families in need but are often underutilized, including the Family First Prevention Services Act

Building Infrastructure to Activate Change

We ensure appropriate stakeholder development feedback loops and we ensure that families who are the beneficiaries remain at the center of the design

Collaborating for Better

OPT-In for Families works with four technical assistance providers to comprehensively support selected sites as they build out their prevention initiatives.

Implementation research and technical assistance

Site facilitation and governance

Engaging individuals with lived experience

Evidence-based interventions and evaluation

Learning, and Scaling, What Works

Together, we will test new approaches, build a learning collaborative, conduct research, and advocate for national policy changes. We commit to learning what works through data and research-informed demonstrations, and we will share our findings widely.

Our goal is to refine and scale OPT-In for Families, assisting other states in building a community-based, prevention-oriented response system for families at greatest risk of foster care involvement, as well as to effect policy changes at the state and federal level that bends towards prevention—to have an enduring impact on the well-being of families and children.

Learning, and Scaling, What Works

Supporting Visionary Communities

The Doris Duke Foundation has selected four sites to demonstrate our proof of concept. These sites are well-positioned to succeed, demonstrating great promise and vision for change and having resources, partners and innovative pathways in place or in sight.