Primary Prevention

The Primary Prevention Branch organizes prevention activities for the public, where all community members have access to and can benefit from services, resources, and awareness/education.

The Primary Prevention Branch manages contracts, participates in community collaborations, provides consultation, develops standards of practice, and provides state program guidance to child protective service workers, community members, and contract prevention providers.

Building Community Well-Being Among Families Grant

Brighton Center, Kentucky’s Child Welfare system (Department of Community Based Services), Family Nurturing Center, and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago partnered to create the Building Community Well-Being Among Families Project, co-designed with families with lived experience.

The vision is to develop a comprehensive child and family well-being system, building off the Thriving Families, Safer Children initiative, to better address social determinants of health and improve individual and family protective factors.

The Project region includes three counties of Northern Kentucky (Campbell, Kenton, Boone). The Project builds a child and family well-being system that targets both individual and system-level change. At the system level, parents and youth are engaged as partners to better understand their journey, define well-being, enhance communication efforts (including technology), and provide training for both the community and system partners. Families receive concrete and other direct services from the primary prevention system to meet their needs.

For more information please see the Brighton Center website at https://www.brightoncenter.com/programs/family_services/building-community-well-being.

Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky

Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky (PCAK) provides prevention services in local communities. PCAK organizes the statewide coordination of self-help, education and support groups for parents who want to prevent or end physical, sexual, or mental abuse of children in Kentucky, provide education to the public about the concern of child abuse and neglect, specifically activities around Child Abuse Prevention Month (CAPM) and the "Kids Are Worth It" statewide conference on child abuse, public education movements where community members can support children through Lean on Me KY, and fatherhood engagement activities.

For more information please see the PCAK website at https://pcaky.org.

Lean on Me Kentucky

Lean On Me Kentucky is a movement, a Call-to-Action for each of us to help build stronger communities so our children grow up healthy and safe, and our families – all families—are valued and thrive. These efforts include raising awareness in communities about the factors that protect families and the tools to help support them.

Community Collaboration for Children

Community Based Child Abuse Prevention grant funds in-home based services designed to educate, strengthen, and support families to prevent child abuse and neglect. These services are provided using the Nurturing Parenting Program (NPP) which is an evidence-based, parenting class designed to build parenting skills with families, and other evidence-based interventions.

Services empower the family by teaching problem solving skills, discussing appropriate discipline skills, assisting parents in becoming self-supporting, and organizing available community resources.

Services include skill-based intervention with flexible scheduling to better serve families. In-home service staff model positive parenting/caregiver skills to assist families in remaining safely together, while addressing their current needs. This program is low-risk in-home services that runs for 8-12 weeks to help families with parenting strategies, problem solving and accessing community supports. It is available statewide and is for families without ongoing DCBS involvement.

The community can refer families, families can self-refer, CPS intake can refer if a report does not meet criteria, and workers can refer through Alternative Response cases or if they have an investigation that will be unsubstantiated and is closing.

Refer to Community Collaboration for Children at ccc.referral@ky.gov

Regional Networks

Through CBCAP, regional networks are also carried out in each region, made up of community partners and parents. They work together to carry out trainings, resource access, and community events to reduce child abuse and neglect in their communities and to strengthen families.