Prowers County’s Community Child Maltreatment Prevention
To better support families in Prowers County, the Prowers County Department of Human Services applied for and received a Child Maltreatment Prevention Framework for Action (Framework) Community Planning Grant in October 2017, putting the county on the front lines of planning efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect in Colorado. In addition to financial assistance from the Colorado Office of Early Childhood, the grant included extensive support from Early Milestones Colorado, a nonprofit intermediary that serves as a statewide conduit for best practices and high-impact ideas that promote success for young children and families in Colorado.
The agency’s primary motivation for applying for the grant was to align the work of multiple agencies and organizations (the Child Protection Team, Child Fatality Prevention Team, Substance Abuse Taskforce, Early Childhood Council, Collaborative Management Program, etc.) in order to reduce redundancy and apply their resources more efficiently to the shared goal of curbing child maltreatment in the county. “It was our hope that this funding and the facilitation of moving through the framework could be the common thread that would tie all of this important work together,” explained Lanie Meyers-Mireles, director of the Prowers County Department of Human Services. “We were successful in doing just that for the benefit of Prowers County children and families.”
Coalition Partners
Child Maltreatment Prevention
Framework for Action
This framework is designed as a tool to guide strategic thinking at the state and local level, about resource investments to prevent child maltreatment and promote child well-being. As this tool is used collectively across the state, the resulting alignment of strategies will maximize the impact on shared outcomes.
Prowers County plans to prevent child maltreatment
Prowers County’s Community Child Maltreatment Prevention planning yielded seven primary goals and corresponding objectives:
Provide parents with improved access to information and resources to raise healthy kids.
- Increase the number of evidence-based practices and services available by 2019 by collaborating with an array of community partners.
Empower community members to acquire skills necessary for their family to thrive.
- Increase number of EB practices and services available by 5/1/2019 by collaborating with an array of community partners.
Information and communication will be available to everyone in primary language(s), and community, business and service providers will celebrate cultural diversity.
- By July 2019, non-English speaking residents of Prowers County will report increased connectedness with the English-speaking community, schools, service providers and businesses by being provided and receiving enhanced communication in their primary language via written and audio format and via social media.
Share information between service providers and business community about the needs, barriers and services available to working families.
- Coordinate a joint meeting to be held by January 1, 2019, between service providers (Workforce, DHS, Public Health, Early Childhood Council) and the local Chambers of Commerce, Prowers Economic Prosperity group and Lamar Community College to share information about the needs, barriers and services available to working families.
Through an active media campaign, community members, schools, business community and service providers will be provided education and tools to adjust their service delivery of business practice to address and meet the needs of citizens impacted by trauma.
- Prowers County residents will be provided the opportunity to better understand the impact of trauma on children and families by being provided trauma-informed training opportunities twice per fiscal year.
To develop, implement and sustain a community dashboard accessible to all Prowers County residents by September 30, 2018.
- Prowers County residents will utilize the dashboard to find identified strategies to reach community developed outcomes of 1) residents choose to live, stay and invest in Prowers County, 2) Prowers County residents will engage in healthy eating, and 3) Prowers County residents will engage in active living.
Strengthen family-friendly workplaces in Prowers County.
- Increase the number of workplaces with family-friendly policies by July 1, 2019, in five of the top employers in Prowers County.