Cross-System Collaboration and Engagement of the Public Health Model to Promote the Well-Being of Children and Families

Abstract

A public health model aimed at promoting children's well-being by reducing risks in the environment and enhancing protection at the individual, family, and community levels is frequently recommended as a framework for implementing programs and policies in the nation's child welfare, juvenile justice, mental and behavioral health, and education systems. Unfortunately, these systems of care are often inadequately equipped to advance a public health framework focused on preventive interventions and policies. This invited article addresses the need for system reform and calls for collaboration to advance prevention goals, underscoring the need to trade reactive, deficit-oriented strategies for those that are proactive, empowering, and strengths-based. Strategies to encourage social work practitioners and policymakers to become more involved in advancing prevention principles in systems of care are noted.

Improving Behavioral Health in Young People: It Is Time for Social Work to Adopt Prevention

“…Social workers trained in advocacy and policy can also bring together community residents and professionals to shape local education, health, and human service delivery and state and national initiatives to unleash the power of prevention. Together with allied professions, social work researchers can help ensure that tested and effective preventive interventions are supported by parallel initiatives in health care, education, public health, mental health, child welfare, and juvenile justice (Herrenkohl, in press; Jenson & Fraser, 2016). Finally, social workers can actively advocate for increased emphasis on preventing behavioral health problems in federal, state, and local policies and budgets.…”

The Personal Security of Children Demands Bold System Reform

“…However, a well-balanced system has primary prevention and universal services as the largest component. If successfully implemented, primary prevention services will shift the risk profile positively for an entire community, meaning that fewer children and families will need more intensive secondary or tertiary services (Herrenkohl 2019;Herrenkohl et al 2015;Higgins et al 2019). In addition, by engaging families earlier, services will be experienced as less punitive and less stigmatizing and will provide more timely responses to the pressing issues they face.…”

“…Typically, the child welfare system focuses on tertiary responses and, thus, it misses opportunities to engage lower risk families before targeted interventions become necessary. Often, the universal or primary-prevention support services are the responsibilities of sectors outside of child welfare, such education or primary health, but even these systems are poorly equipped to support the broad and diverse needs of families who can benefit from preventions services (Herrenkohl 2019). Moving the focus away from a child protection (tertiary) response to a proactive child-wellbeing prevention support system will require engagement of these other sectors, and, together, they must (re)focus on primary and secondary interventions.…”

“…This requires starting with the agencies that already have universal service delivery platforms in place (schools, early childhood services, primary health clinics, and maternal and child health services), and build on these. In schools, it is possible to embed tiered strategies of support that start with universal programs (Herrenkohl 2019;Herrenkohl et al 2019a, b).…”

Commentary: Umbrella synthesis of meta‐analyses on child maltreatment antecedents and interventions – a commentary on van IJzendoorn and colleagues (2020)

“…To understand how resilience unfolds requires a comprehensive assessment of intersecting variables rooted in genetics and biology, as well as in the social environment. Although not as yet evident from intervention research, social support and other like factors do appear in etiological studies on child maltreatment as important sources of resilience (Bellis et al, ), indicating the need for further exploration of the ways that positive and nurturing relationships and environments can be placed at the center of multi‐level and systems‐oriented prevention strategies (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, ) that also have potential to lessen racial disparities and inequities in access and service quality (Herrenkohl, ).…”