Ask yourself: What is my community doing to prevent child maltreatment?

The incidence of child abuse and neglect decreases when communities work to strengthen families and support child development.

Colorado has been a leading state in community-focused approaches that coordinate prevention efforts far upstream – before child maltreatment even occurs. Guided by the Colorado Child Maltreatment Prevention Framework for Action, Early Milestones supported the first cohort of 15 communities in the development of local prevention plans. Support included meeting facilitation, peer-to-peer learning, webinars, and management of an online learning community.

Communities in Action

The pioneer cohort undertook an eight-month planning process using the Prevention Framework and the Community Planning Toolbox. Nearly all planning communities (93%) secured funding to implement activities in their new plans and 77% were working on program and policy improvements within 90 days. Five additional counties began developing local plans in 2019.

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Prevention Planning Resources

First Cohort Progress Report

This report details the efforts and lessons learned by the first Colorado communities to collectively identify and implement best practices in the prevention of child maltreatment.

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Learn About the Framework

The Colorado Child Maltreatment Prevention Framework for Action is a national model to guide planning and mobilize action at the community level.

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Community Planning Toolbox

This collection of resources includes a variety of templates, guides, reports, and survey results.

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What Planning Communities Said

I think that the heightened communication between the organizations that were all on the leadership team is pretty great. Each of the counties we worked in is really different, but in both scenarios, I think organization relationships have been strengthened.

[This process was] different because we are typically planning for one sector or another – we are always planning for early childhood – but it wasn’t only early childhood folks who came out. It went across many sectors to benefit all children and families, and we should be proud of that.

Partners

Thank you to the community champions and parents who participated in the community planning process, the ZOMA Foundation for providing funding to support the first cohort of communities, and the Colorado Office of Early Childhood for serving as an implementation partner and project funder.

  • Colorado Office of Early Childhood