Many of our county partners are diligently working on the development of their Comprehensive Prevention Plans, part of the opt-in process for counties to receive Title IV-E prevention services dollars.  The prevention plans are due in January 2023 to the state.  As a result, there are a lot of rich discussions occurring around prevention services.   FFPSA looks at prevention with the following lens: 

• Primary Prevention: These activities are directed at the general population to strengthen communities and improve child well-being by focusing on the social determinants of health, defined as the conditions into which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.
• Secondary Prevention: These activities are offered to populations that have one or more risk factors associated with compromised well-being or child maltreatment, such as poverty, parental substance abuse, young parental age, parental mental health concerns, exposure to violence, and parental or child disabilities. Programs seek to build protective factors and mitigate the risk factors.
• Tertiary Prevention: These activities focus on families where child maltreatment has occurred, seeking to mitigate its trauma and reduce the negative consequences of the maltreatment, and prevent its recurrence.

Title IV-E dollars will provide funding for direct services at the secondary and tertiary prevention levels.  As FFPSA is the largest practice shift Child Welfare has seen in decades, conversations around prevention and practice shifts will continue to guide our work.  To orient our state to prevention services, CDSS has been working with CalTrin to provide a webinar series on the topic of prevention services.  All upcoming and recorded webinars can be found at the following website.