Keep More Families Together Safely

It is within Texas' power to halve the odds that a child will ever experience child abuse or neglect and to make sure no child suffers unnecessarily the trauma of being separated from a safe family.

Recently, science has shown that a great deal of child abuse, neglect, and dysfunction doesn’t have to be a fact of life. Rather, proven services that involve families make a life-altering difference: they prevent tragedy outright or address troubles to keep crises at bay. Many of these services keep children from experiencing more serious adversity by addressing whatever is the root cause of instability in a child’s home. This leads more children to remain safely with their families instead of entering foster care, which improves their lives and their trajectory in the future and leads to cost-savings for society. Children in foster care, too, are better off when the system addresses their wellbeing by improving well-being in their families, something that leads more kids into permanent safe homes and fewer parents to have to surrender their children to the child welfare system.

To read and download the full policy brief click here.