Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation Initiative
Collaborating to Prevent Abuse and Promote Hope
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.
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.
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.
