Model and Strategy
Safe & Sound will implement Integrated Children & Family Services (ICFS) to create a pathway to end family violence by supporting 1,000 families per year at high risk for child abuse and neglect. At least 75% of families engaged in ICFS for 12+ months show improvement in their Protective Factors (PFs) that are shown to reduce abuse. ICFS provides wraparound, data-informed, two-generation interventions that bolster vulnerable families’ PFs. Staff administer adapted evidence-based assessments of families’ PFs, risk factors, and history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to identify strengths and areas requiring targeted support. Families work with a Clinical Care Coordinator who facilitates a team including therapists, care managers, parent educators, and other service providers.
Interventions might include: mental health services including individual, group, and parent/child therapy; crisis support via our TALK Line to support parental resilience; Therapeutic Children’s Playroom to support children’s social emotional learning and mental health; individual and group parenting classes; social groups or events to forge social connections; and concrete needs support.
Impact
Over the past 15 years, San Francisco has seen the overall rate of substantiated child abuse cases decrease by 65%. This success is rooted in an intentional focus on prevention, including supporting a network of family support centers and data-driven practices coupled with evidenced-based mental health and support programming, as well as changing demographics. Safe & Sound has been proud to be a leader in the effort to prevent child abuse, which is an ongoing crisis that has devastating impacts on children, families, and communities and imposes an astronomical social cost. Still, there is much more work to be done in San Francisco and beyond.
Safe & Sound’s ICFS program has huge potential to have a larger impact in our city and in other communities. As the implications of ACEs become ever clearer, healthcare providers are implementing universal screening tools for ACEs and toxic stress in greater numbers. While this provides essential information to patients and practitioners about the relationship between past adverse experiences and current negative health outcomes, there remains a gap in knowledge of how to respond to this information, in particular how to prevent or interrupt the intergenerational transmission of the effects of toxic stress in families. ICFS seeks to address this gap by establishing a measurable, operationalized structure for supporting PFs that are known to mitigate the effects of toxic stress in families and prevent child abuse. ICFS has been in development at Safe & Sound for over five years, and a formative evaluation of the program will provide essential initial data regarding the success of our model as well as tools that other providers may utilize to implement the ICFS program successfully.
Leadership
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Katie Albright
CEO
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Cheryl Polk
Chief Program Officer