Family First Implementation FAQs

Implementing Family First is what’s best for Colorado’s children, youth and families. Family First provides a pathway for the child welfare system to help families safely stay together through the use of federal funds to pay for services designed to keep families intact. Family First helps ensure that children/youth are not unnecessarily separated from parents who could provide safe and loving care if given access to needed mental health services, substance abuse treatment or improved parenting skills.

Family First provides an opportunity to make substantial improvements in the outcomes of children, youth and families in the child welfare system. Such improvements, as Family First seeks to create, require shifts in long-held mindsets, a new vision of serving children, youth and families, and a commitment to a different way of working with communities and the broader child welfare system. Family First focuses on ensuring that when children/youth must be removed from their families, they are with family/kin or in family-foster homes. When children/youth need a higher level of care as determined by the statewide assessment tool, they will have the supports of a time-limited, high quality, trauma-informed QRTP setting.

Children, youth and families in Colorado deserve access to resources that could provide evidence-based services keep families together and improve their outcomes.

Implementing Family First is an opportunity for Colorado to lead, innovate and further Colorado’s vision and mission for children, youth and families. Colorado’s IV-E Waiver will end September 30, 2019. The Waiver allowed for flexible IV-E funding for a range of interventions and services. It would be prudent to transition directly from the Waiver to the opportunity to access federal IV-E reimbursement for the prevention services to potentially allow for the continuation of services (if the services are within the soon-to-be-developed Federal Evidence-Based Clearinghouse) that might not otherwise be funded. This change provides the opportunity to align other priorities and work to expand Colorado’s prevention services continuum. Implementing prevention services allows for continued building of research and effectiveness, and these services support the goal of keeping children and youth safely with their family.

Additionally, Family First is a federal law, and all states must comply.

The Family First Implementation Team is responsible for developing, deploying and monitoring a plan to implement Family First. Objectives and outcomes include:

• Ensure Colorado’s Family First vision and values are upheld
• Define and prioritize areas of focus
• Identify and recruit needed people for participation in implementation workgroups
• Assure an evaluation component accompanies implementation
• Monitor and report on implementation progress (use of data)
• Develop and implement a communication and education plan
• Communicate and coordinate with the Colorado Department of Human Services, Advisory Committee and the Delivery of Child Welfare Services Task Force

Learn more about the Implementation Team, its members, meeting minutes and agendas on the CDHS boards and commissions webpage.

In order to access Title IV-E funds for prevention services available through Family First, each state must submit a federal Prevention Program Plan (Plan) to the Children’s Bureau for review and approval.

All states must implement Family First by October 1, 2021. Due to the unforeseen impact of COVID-19, Colorado continues to assess its timeline to opt-in.

The Division of Child Welfare Learning & Development Team is currently working with the Family First Implementation Team workgroups to determine required behavior changes for caseworkers and county department staff as a result of Family First. That information will inform the collaborative work between the Learning & Development Team and the Child Welfare Training System (CWTS) to determine the types of learning activities that will be most effective. We anticipate making revisions to existing training, while also developing some Family First-specific learning opportunities, including micro-burst videos, online training, Transfer of Learning (TOL) activities and other experiential approaches.

Additionally, the Learning & Development Team and CWTS have been working over the last year to cultivate the soil for the systems change required by Family First. This includes defining what it means to be a trauma-informed child welfare system, addressing systemic racial inequities, and emphasizing learning activities for supervisors, teams and organizations.

Colorado’s 2020-2024 Child & Family Services Plan included a five-year training plan, which includes a strategy to seek reimbursement for training activities related to Family First and prevention candidates.

In addition, the Family First Act includes a requirement for Court Improvement Programs (CIP) to provide training to judicial officers and the legal community around QRTP. Colorado’s CIP has provided a number of opportunities for judicial officers and attorneys to learn more about the Act and the implications of it for specific cases. 

The State and the Implementation Team continue to work alongside stakeholders to provide overviews about the Family First Act and the impact on Colorado.  If you are interested in receiving training, please contact us.

Trails Modernization Release 6 added new functionality to support the implementation of Family First. The release, which occurred in summer 2020,  included QRTPs, Evidence-Based Programs, candidacy determinations and prevention plans.

In the Fall of 2020, the full and final release of Trails Modernization is slated to occur. This will bring all Family First-related functionality into modernized Trails. However, CDHS anticipates that as Family First implementation progresses and as we receive more guidance from our federal partners, additional Trails functionality/changes may be needed.

Colorado’s federal partners at the Administration for Children and Families have been generous funding capital development, and CDHS continues to ask for general funds from the Joint Budget Committee in support of both Joint Agency Interoperability and Trails.

Although no final decisions have been made, discussions about the impact of Family First implementation on small, rural counties are happening within the Division of Child Welfare (DCW), the Family First Implementation Team meetings and associated workgroups. DCW will ensure intermediaries assigned to counties have the resources and knowledge to support small, rural counties in their implementation of Family First.

In recognition that the Clearinghouse currently lists a limited number of prevention services, the federal government has issued guidance allowing states to use their own rigorous review to provide prevention services and receive federal reimbursement. This is referred to as transitional claiming. 

Colorado is committed to seeking transitional claiming for additional statewide programs. In collaboration with our research community, we have developed a rubric for Prioritizing Family First evidence reviews for transitional payment[ss1] . The purpose of the rubric is to better understand the feasibility and potential value of qualifying a program or service for transitional payments. When the Family First Implementation Team receives a request to include a program or service in the Prevention Plan, the rubric will be used to prioritize conducting evidence reviews. Efforts will also be made to learn if another jurisdiction is already engaging in an evidence review of that program or service, to avoid duplication. Colorado’s research community is ready to begin looking at High Fidelity Wraparound, Colorado Community Response and Differential Response. CDHS continues to discuss and seek resources needed to ensure coordinated research efforts overseen by the State.