Keeping Children Safe is Everybody's Business

The Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) approach aims to keep children safe from abuse and neglect and to support families. This approach recognizes that keeping children safe is everybody's business and that community members must be offered opportunities to help vulnerable families and shape the services and supports provided.

In Iowa, Community Partnerships have brought together parents, youth, social service professionals, faith ministries, local business, schools and caring neighbors to help design, govern and participate in programs that seek to create a continuum of care and support for children, youth and parents in their neighborhoods.

We invite you to find out more about us!  And remember there is a place for you in Community Partnerships for Protecting Children!

What is Community Partnership?

• Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) is an approach that recognizes keeping children safe is everybody's business.
• It's an approach that neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states can adopt to improve how children are protected from maltreatment. 
• A Community Partnership is not a program  - rather, it is a way of working with families that helps services to be more inviting, needs-based, accessible, and relevant. 
• Community Partnerships incorporate preventi on strategies as well as those needed to address identified maltreatment.
• The Community Partnership approach aims to blend the work and expertise of both professionals and residents to bolster supports for vulnerable families and children.
• It's an opportunity for community members to get involved in helping families in need, and in shaping the types of services and supports needed by these families.
• It is a partnership of public and private agencies, systems, community members, and professionals who work together to:
• prevent maltreatment before it occurs;
• respond quickly and effectively when it does occur;
• reduce the re-occurrence of child maltreatment, through tailored family interventions.

Community Partnership has four primary strategies that guide this approach

Frequently Asked Questions ~ A document available for printing to share with partners or others interested in Community Partnership.

Getting Started ~ A document that guides the process of starting a Community Partnership

Implementation FlowChart ~ A document that guides policy and practice change

The Communtiy Partnership approach can sometimes be a difficult concept to grasp or put into action. But community leaders, families, the Department of Human Services and other professionals, and volunteers have provided thousands of examples of simple and practical steps that have served communities and strengthened families. Some of these examples are showcased in the Community Partnership newsletters. Director of DHS Gene Gessow also shared scenarios of how Community Partnerships have made a difference. The scenarios are found below:

Available Resources for Developing Community Partnerships