Through the Community Pathway Initiative, we are building a scalable, upstream, community-based model designed to reduce child welfare and criminal justice involvement by providing timely, trusted, and trauma-informed care. Rooted in early intervention and family-centered approaches, this model leverages a network of family support centers, including Family Resource Centers, and cross-sector partners to connect families to holistic, wraparound services before crises escalate.

According to our research, child abuse and neglect cost California over $16 billion in 2024. This represents thousands of missed opportunities for prevention and confirms that the costs of abuse and neglect for impacted children and their families are both significant and long lasting, while bringing into stark relief the financial cost of the current approach that prioritizes intervention after a crisis has occurred instead of an approach that focuses on prevention.

Our vision is to revolutionize family support so that all families have the resources they need to thrive. The Community Pathway focuses on engaging families in co-creating their support plans, coordinating services, and delivering evidence-based interventions that lead to stronger, more resilient families and communities. This holistic approach, supported by our ongoing collective impact, policy advocacy and capacity-building efforts, will create a robust, interconnected system that prioritizes upstream community-based supports, limits child welfare involvement, and ultimately transforms the landscape of family support in San Francisco and beyond.

Community pathways provide children, parents, and other caregivers access to holistic, culturally relevant, local prevention services from trusted providers in their community. Building and supporting a Community Pathway in San Francisco will help to identify families in need of support, and connect them to these community based services to prevent the need for child welfare involvement.

By ensuring families receive the right support at the right time, the Community Pathway model fosters stronger and more resilient communities. The cumulative impact of this approach is one that can be felt across generations, buffering children from exposure to adversity and breaking a cycle that places adult survivors of childhood trauma at greater risk for re-victimization and correlated detriments including chronic health and mental health issues, substance abuse problems, unstable employment, poverty, homelessness, and involvement in the criminal justice system. This unique approach holds powerful potential to transform the landscape of family support in San Francisco and beyond, deploying an evidence-based model that can easily be scaled across the State.

1. Identifying Needs and Eligibility: Families in need of support can be identified through various channels, including schools and early childhood education providers, churches, Family Resource Centers (FRCs), community-based organizations, law enforcement, physicians and nurses, city departments, and self-referrals. These families often face challenges related to meeting basic needs (i.e., for food, housing, and medical care), mental health, substance use, parenting support, and more. The families are supported in identifying their specific needs and assessing their eligibility for various services and benefits. This ensures that each family receives the appropriate support tailored to their circumstances.
   
2. Engaging Families: We engage families and help them identify which services best meet their needs and co-create a family plan. This collaborative approach ensures that families are active participants in their own support process, fostering a sense of ownership and empowerment.
   
3. Partnering and Coordinating Services: We work in close partnership with families to carry out their individualized support plans, actively coordinating across service providers to ensure families receive holistic, high-quality care. By fostering continuous communication and alignment among providers, we reduce duplication of efforts—improving the experience for families and generating cost savings across the system. This coordinated approach strengthens San Francisco’s broader “web” of supports, enabling us to collectively do more with our shared resources.
   
4. Strengthening Families: By providing evidence-based and evidence-informed services, we work to strengthen families, helping them build resilience and stability. This includes providing parents and caregivers foundational training in the Five Protective Factors and Domains of Wellness, and their application to direct services, which has been central to our approach.
   
5. Building Stronger Communities: By supporting families in this holistic manner, we contribute to the development of stronger, more resilient communities. This approach not only benefits individual families, but also fosters a supportive and interconnected community environment.
   
6. Building Capacity: We enhance our database network to improve referral tracking and shared resources among partner organizations. This capacity-building effort ensures that families receive coordinated and timely support, leading to more effective service delivery and stronger outcomes.

As the backbone of the San Francisco Family Services Alliance (FSA), Safe & Sound brings over five decades of experience in child abuse prevention, systems change, and community collaboration. We are uniquely positioned to lead this work—coordinating across agencies, advancing policy reforms, expanding public funding access, and providing technical assistance to strengthen local infrastructure.

Over the past three years, as part of our leadership role of the FSA and the Child Abuse Prevention Council for San Francisco, Safe & Sound has implemented critical foundational work which has positioned us to lead the Community Pathway Initiative. This work has included:

• representing FRCs in San Francisco’s Families First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) prevention planning and implementation process
  
• leading efforts to reform California’s mandated reporting system to one of community supporting
  
• increasing the sustainability and building the capacity of FRCs
  
• providing training and technical assistance, and (v) advocating for and advancing policies that support a community-centric model of family support.

You can read more about this work on our Policy and Advocacy Page.