An Initiative to Keep Children and Families from Involvement with the Massachusetts Child Welfare System
Each night in Massachusetts, thousands of children and youth sleep in places they do not consider home after being separated from their families and placed in foster care by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF).
At the same time, tens of thousands more children and parents remain involved with the child welfare system while continuing to live at home, often under the shadow of potential family separation.
Many children are forced into the system not because of intentional harm, but because families experiencing poverty, domestic violence, mental health challenges, or substance use disorders are too often unable to access the support they need and become involved with a child welfare system that too often mistakes hardship for neglect.
Surveillance and child removal rarely happen to families who have financial means. Despite being one of the wealthiest states in the nation, Massachusetts removes children from their families at a rate approximately 40% higher than the national average.
Too many young people involved with DCF face repeated upheaval, instability, and uncertain futures. Outcomes for children and youth involved with the Massachusetts child welfare system are among the worst in the nation.
This is not a crisis of parental intent—it is a crisis of poverty, policy, and systems failure.
Vision and Mission
ChildThrive Initiative envisions a child and family well-being system where every child receives the necessary support to be safe, healthy, and connected to caring adults, and every parent is equipped to help their children thrive at home.
Our mission is to establish a child and family well-being system in Massachusetts that keeps children, youth, and families out of the child welfare system by advancing community-driven, prevention-centered solutions that strengthen families and the safety net that supports them.
It Is Time for a New Day for Children and Families in Massachusetts
ChildThrive is an independent research and action initiative focused on preventing unnecessary system involvement and strengthening child and family well-being in communities. Solutions will be co-designed with impacted individuals and families. We act as a catalyst, independent of government bureaucracy and the existing child welfare system, to advance new approaches grounded in data, focused on outcomes, and designed to challenge the status quo.
This work focuses on identifying gaps in resources and access—so families can get the support they need before challenges result in DCF involvement and lead to surveillance or separation. It prioritizes data and outcomes, centers the insights of those closest to these challenges in the development of solutions, and examines how resources are allocated—so they can be directed toward what works and does not involve DCF. Our work is designed to drive practical, on-the-ground change.
What We Advance
Independent thinking
Independent thinking means rigorous research that illuminates the challenges children and families face—and identifies pathways to real change.
More effective policy
More effective policy means moving beyond inadequate structures to build approaches grounded in what children and families actually need—and what works.
Better outcomes
Better outcomes means measurable success—children and families thriving, not merely surviving.
Reduced child-welfare system involvement
Reduced child-welfare system involvement means ensuring access to the support families need so that hardship is not mistaken for neglect and families remain intact.
Massachusetts must do better now.
ChildThrive Initiative works to support children, strengthen families in their communities, and prevent unnecessary family separation and involvement in the child welfare system. Children and families are bearing the brunt of federal budget reductions and policy changes within a Massachusetts safety net that has been inadequate for decades.
Join us in moving the Commonwealth toward child and family well-being through research, partnership, and action.
Explore Our Work
Failing Our Kids: Measures of the Broken Child Welfare System in Massachusetts
Read the report