SAFE@Home Overview
SAFE@Home is a community-based service that provides in-home safety management and parenting assistance to families with children requiring protection. It is recognized as a Promising Practice by the California Evidence-based Clearinghouse. The program aims to keep children with their families through various services delivered by community providers in collaboration with public child welfare agencies. Specific criteria are used to identify the least intrusive approach for managing child safety and determining eligibility for SAFE@Home services. Community-based safety managers work with public child welfare caseworkers to create in-home safety plans tailored to meet the needs of the family. Objectives outlined in each in-home safety plan are organized around five Safety Categories:
- Behavior management: Activities, arrangements, services, etc. that control the caregiver’s behavior.
Crisis management: Specifically concerned with intervening to prevent or stop a crisis and to mobilize problem-solving to return a family to a state of calm. - Social connection: Reduces social isolation and seeks to provide social support.
- Resource support: Directed at a shortage of family resources and resource utilization, the absence of which directly threatens child safety.
- Separation: Creates alternatives to the family routine, scheduling, demands, and daily pressure and provides designated, temporary, or longer-term periods of time when a child is not with the caregiver which is facilitated by the safety service manager but provided resources outside of the SAFE@Home program.
Our research partners conducted a rigorous quasi-experimental study examining the effectiveness of SAFE@Home, implemented by Clark County Department of Family Services (CCDFS). Results revealed that children served through SAFE@Home experienced improved outcomes such as: Lowe rates of out-of-home placement, fewer days in foster care, higher rates of permanency with parents, and shorter time to case closure.
Our experts are available to provide consultative services, training and implementation support for SAFE@Home.
