Rethinking Child and Family Well-being

Families across Massachusetts are facing rising economic strain at the very moment public supports are becoming more fragile. Too often, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) reacts not to intentional harm, but to the effects of poverty and unmet basic needs.

Poverty Is Too Often Mistaken for Neglect

In Massachusetts, most child welfare cases involve neglect rather than abuse; neglect accounted for 88% of substantiated cases in 2024. Research increasingly shows that neglect allegations are conflated with economic hardship, including housing instability, food insecurity, lack of childcare, domestic violence, and unmet health or mental health needs.

Family Separation Has Lasting Consequences

Children generally experience stronger emotional and developmental outcomes when they are able to remain safely at home, connected to their families, communities, and support networks. Early, family-centered resources and supports can help reduce instability and strengthen long-term well-being. 

Even brief involvement with surveillance and monitoring systems can destabilize families and increase trauma for children and youth. A growing body of research has documented the lasting emotional, developmental, and economic impacts of child welfare investigations and family separation, particularly when families could have been supported safely within their communities.

Families experiencing poverty, families of color, and LGBTQIA+ youth are disproportionately affected by child welfare involvement. Structural inequities increase both economic vulnerability and exposure to system surveillance, deepening disparities for families already facing considerable challenges.

Existing Systems Are Fragmented

The network of agencies and organizations serving children and families often operates in silos, making it difficult for families to access coordinated support before crises escalate. As documented in our chronicle, Failing Our Kids, the current child welfare system in Massachusetts is broken, underperforming, and often harmful.

Economic Supports Can Prevent Harm

Research shows that concrete supports—including stable housing, food access, childcare, and income assistance—can reduce family instability and decrease unnecessary involvement with child welfare systems. Many situations labeled as neglect could be prevented through earlier, community-based support.

When we understand involvement with a harmful child welfare system through the lens of economic strain, systemic inequity, and fragmented supports, a different path forward becomes the priority.

ChildThrive Initiative envisions a Massachusetts child and family well-being system.  Our approach is grounded in data, focused on outcomes, and designed to challenge the status quo.  

Our initial phase focuses on four core areas of research, assessment, analysis, and action:

First, we are mapping the Commonwealth’s formal safety net, the gaps in support and services at the community level, and issues with accessibility. This work was initiated through a project with Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, and we are currently working on a plan to complete the next phase of the project. This mapping will provide the basic information required to move to the next steps in our plan.

Second, we are assessing how reductions in federal funding and changes to safety net policies—and their downstream effects at the state level—are impacting children, youth, and their caregivers.  We plan to partner with a major university center for state policy analysis to produce this report and recommendations.

Third, we are integrating national research on policies and practices that promote and sustain child and family well-being, thereby reducing involvement with child welfare systems. We will hone in on those approaches that show the greatest promise for improving outcomes for children and families in Massachusetts.

Fourth, we will work with families, community leaders, service providers, and lived experts across Massachusetts to identify practical, community-shaped pathways to change. Through regional and community-based conversations, we will combine research findings with the lived realities of children and families to help shape effective solutions. 

Together, this work is designed to strengthen families, reduce unnecessary child welfare system involvement, and advance more effective approaches to child and family well-being across the state.

ChildThrive Initiative brings together research, community partnership, unconventional thinking, and bold new approaches to child and family well-being to help families access support before crises escalate into child welfare involvement. 

We Work Across Systems and Communities

Children and families are affected by interconnected systems, including housing, education, health care, economic policy, and child welfare. ChildThrive brings together community organizations, public agencies, providers, advocates, policymakers, and families to build more coordinated responses grounded in the realities, strengths, and informal support networks already present within communities. We believe lasting solutions emerge not only from institutions, but from the knowledge, relationships, and resilience that exist within communities themselves. 

Families and Communities Shape Solutions

Families with lived experience are not simply participants in this work—they bring essential lived expertise that helps shape priorities, inform decisions, and co-create solutions alongside community leaders, providers, and advocates. Impacted individuals know what they need, yet they are not asked by the existing child welfare system; they are told.  ChildThrive is committed to shared leadership, meaningful community partnership, and approaches that recognize the strengths, wisdom, and informal support networks already present within communities.

Deep Massachusetts Experience

ChildThrive’s leadership brings decades of experience in child advocacy, direct service, systems reform, research, and public policy in Massachusetts. We have longstanding relationships with lived experts, providers, advocates, legislators, legal experts, and community leaders across the Commonwealth. After years of attempting basic reform of the existing child welfare system, we have decided to focus on building the structure necessary to significantly reduce the number of children and families involved with the system.

Independent and Forward-Looking

As an independent organization, ChildThrive can convene diverse stakeholders, examine difficult system challenges honestly, and advance innovative solutions focused on child and family well-being. We are working to ensure Massachusetts takes care of children and families through approaches other than the child welfare system. We will relentlessly pursue change and will not be deterred by a system that strongly protects the status quo. We will be the voice for this change at all tables to deal with this system that harms children and families. We believe children, youth, families, and communities must lead the development of the policies and supports intended to serve them.