Policy & Practice | Fall 2026

partnering for impact

By Alana Barr, Jennifer O’Brien, and Yolanda Green-Rogers

Building the Bridge: How Community Pathways and Modern Technology Can Advance FFPSA Goals

T he Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), enacted in 2018, marked one of the most signifi cant shifts in child welfare policy in decades. Rather than focusing on foster care placement after a crisis occurs, FFPSA encourages states and jurisdic tions to invest in prevention services that strengthen families and prevent out-of-home care. This transformation represents more than a policy adjust ment—it requires an entirely new operational model for child welfare agencies and community partners. At the center of this evolution is the concept of a community pathway. 1 While the vision is compelling, implementation presents substantial technological and operational chal lenges. To succeed, agencies must move beyond fragmented referral processes, disconnected data systems, and manual coordination methods. Technological solutions capable of supporting real-time collaboration, closed-loop referrals, provider engage ment, and fidelity or outcomes tracking are becoming essential infrastructure for FFPSA implementation. This is where innovative closed- loop service referral management systems, such as those developed by Binti, Inc., are poised to play a trans formative role. FFPSA and the Shift Toward Upstream Prevention FFPSA fundamentally changed how states can use federal child welfare funding. By allowing Title IV-E reimbursement for approved evidence based practices (EBPs), including mental health counseling, substance

for operationalizing FFPSA goals and shifting prevention further upstream. At their core, community pathways create networks that offer families services and case management outside of child welfare. Across the country, states and jurisdictions are exploring different approaches for families to access voluntary prevention services through any number of doors, such as through school counseling, health care professionals, housing organizations, or nonprofit organizations, without having to interact with the child welfare agency. Community pathway implementation requires agencies to collect a minimal amount of data to preserve family privacy and ensure access to stabilizing services.

use services, and in-home parent skill based programs, and kinship navigator programs, the law incentivizes agencies to intervene earlier and more effec tively. Historically, many child welfare systems operated reactively. Families often encountered formal systems only after crises escalated to abuse or neglect investigations. FFPSA seeks to reverse that dynamic by encouraging cross-system collaboration among various entities, such as child welfare agencies, schools, health care orga nizations, courts, behavioral health providers, and community-based organizations. However, prevention oriented systems require a very different operational architecture than traditional placement-focused systems. Community pathways are emerging as practical frameworks

See FFPSA Goals on page 44

Illustration by Chris Campbell

8

Policy & Practice Fall 2026