Many communities and states across the country are experimenting with a very different approach to child protection and family well-being. The approach is as promising as it is painstaking. At its heart is a partial shift in accountability for the safety and protection of children from the Child Protective Services agency to the neighborhood or community. By shifting sole accountability for child safety from a single public agency, the goal is to create a broadened framework of commitment and responsibility for the safety, family stability, and successful development of children and families.

Often, as a part of this approach, child welfare staff move from an isolated office to the neighborhoods they serve. They then become a part of a network of professionals, paraprofessionals, and concerned citizens that represent a community-based system of care able to provide services more effectively and efficiently. These community partnerships or community collaboratives, as they are called, create child welfare practice that is proactive, integrated, partnership-oriented, and empowering. Community partnerships hold great promise by helping make child welfare services accessible for families.

This promise of change addresses not just vulnerable children and families, but community service systems as well by building new relationships with partners who have the commitment to keep children safe and strengthen families.

The defining features of community partnerships are familiar. Community partnerships are:

Community-based. Decision making and service design moves to the community and the neighborhood. The community partnership connects families to formal and informal community resources.

* Family-centered. Services build families' strength and resilience by working with the family and community.

* Results-oriented. The system is held accountable at many levels for achieving results that are reflected in measurable improvements in child, family, and community-capital (resources for strength and resilience).

* Participatory. Stakeholders include broad-based community constituencies, both individuals and organizations. Agencies value diversity and encourage those being served to become involved and make decisions for themselves.

* Responsive. Agencies provide services to address the range of family needs in a coordinated way. Agencies and organizations change the way they respond to children, youth, and families, including in their internal operations and cross-system collaborations.

The Complexities of Community Partnerships

Collaborative efforts are complex and time consuming. But the rewards are equal to the commitment that comes from working through, and sometimes around, a variety of issues. Some of the challenges agencies may face include:

* Separately managed funds and inflexible programs and eligibility requirements. Community partnerships are interested in "strengths" but services are only targeted at problems.

* Differences among professional cultures-including the definitions of the "client" or of "success." Harmonizing the approaches of frontline workers in multi-disciplinary teams is challenging.

* The simple sounding, deceptively difficult process of "blending formal and informal services."

* Territorial issues, especially when "good-cop/bad-cop" strategies have become a successful means of connecting with families.

The Potential of Community Partnerships to Implement ASFA

The field of public child welfare is now dominated by the concerns of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). At times, many people in child welfare worry that the ASFA mandates will encourage a retreat from prevention services and family-centered practice. This is not necessarily the case.

The goals of community collaboration in child welfare are complementary to ASFA guidelines. That needs to be recognized. Safety, permanency, and well-being are concepts that are important to communities as well as families. Productivity and quality of life in communities depends on the safety of residents both inside and outside of their homes. The stability of family relationships and community institutions is critical to seeing young people successfully grow into adulthood. This stability is permanency. Furthermore, the domains of family and social development, from education and health care to recreation opportunities, help define well-being. Viewed from this angle, the community partnership agenda and ASFA can share center stage.