CFSP 5 Year Plan - RI Department of Children, Youth & Families

process to solicit evidence-based and promising practice proposals from community providers
on an ongoing basis.
An internal review body within DCYF is comprised of representatives from Child
Welfare, Juvenile Corrections, Children’s Behavioral Health, and Management and Budget.
This body reviews and scores proposals and recommends the selection(s) to the Department
Director for finalization. For the most part, the programs funded through IV-B, parts 1 and 2,
have been supported for many years continuously. Recently, with the development of the
Family Care Community Partnerships, funding from selected family preservation and support
programs in IV-B, parts 1 and 2 were pooled with other funds to support the solicitation in the
RFP for FCCP programming.
The IV-B, part 2 funds supporting Project Family and the Juvenile Justice Host Home
Project in Washington County were transitioned from agency specific programming to provide
available funding for the type of service represented by these two programs. This is part of
DCYF’s larger objective for establishing an Integrated Family and Community System of Care
with lead agencies providing a nexus for community-based networks of formal and informal
supports and resources. These two programs are particularly suited for this transition phase,
given that they provide prevention-oriented services to avoid having cases opened to the Family
Service Units.
CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICE CONTINUUM –
The Department of Children, Youth and Families provides publicly funded programming
throughout a continuum of services for the population of children and families it serves which
include child welfare, children’s behavioral health and juvenile corrections. All of these
services are provided on a statewide basis. On an annual basis, the Department provides
services to approximately 9-thousand children/families.
Through other federal initiatives; e.g., the Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention
(CBCAP) program, the Department has integrated the work of the Children’s Trust Fund to
engage a statewide network of primary, secondary and tertiary child abuse and neglect
prevention programs. Our Intake Supervisor is becoming more familiar with these services as
the Department looks for strong prevention-focused support programs to assist in diverting
families from DCYF involvement, where appropriate.
Funding through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act as amended by the
Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003 supports a co-location nurse liaison from an
Early Intervention program, working with DCYF’s child protective services to implement a
regularized referral process for children under the age of three to an Early Intervention program
or other appropriate early child development and family support program.
All federally funded programs complement the state’s continuum which includes
prevention and early intervention programming for family preservation and support; substitute
care living arrangements which include regular and relative foster care homes, as well as
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