Addressing challenges at the intersection of early intervention and child welfare

The Keep Children and Families Safe Act amendment to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 2003 mandated children under age three who are involved with Child Welfare (CW) to receive a referral to the system for early intervention (EI). While there is strong rationale for providing developmental services to young children and families impacted by maltreatment, the early implementation of this policy brought about many challenges related to interagency coordination and readiness of providers to provide cross-systems care. Currently, as the system and providers within the system recover from the effects of Covid-19, a predicted increase in need of services may exacerbate historical gaps in the provision of services to families involved with CW.

This policy-focused paper explores issues impacting CW and EI providers who coordinate care between CW and EI services.

This paper provides a historical examination of these challenges and proposes an approach for improving developmental services for families referred from CW, specifically through the lens of addressing resources and supports available to providers.

The proposed approach includes an increase and reprioritization of resources to support provider readiness and well-being.

By focusing on support for providers, the authors propose a reduction of stress and improvement of services at each level of the "well-being" system.