Building Strong Futures: Increasing FTC Capacity and Scale
Overview
Family treatment courts (FTCs) have improved safety, permanency, well-being, and recovery outcomes for families in the child welfare system associated with parental substance use for over 25 years. Despite these successful outcomes, many FTCs serve a small portion of families that could benefit from this intensive cross-system collaborative approach. The question: Will FTCs remain isolated, small-scale successful projects, or will they expand to meet the need? This Practice Academy course helps teams understand why discussions about capacity, scale, and community need are vital to the future of FTCs. Attendees will learn about the most common challenges FTCs experience when trying to expand their reach; they’ll leave with concrete tools and strategies to close the gap between those served and those in need.
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize why FTC teams must understand their capacity and scale
- Calculate the FTC’s scale and how it relates to the overall community’s need
- Adopt strategies to close the gap between the FTC’s enrollment and the community’s need
This video highlights why discussions about capacity, scale, and community need are vital to the future of FTCs and for the benefit of families in your communities.
Download the accompanying Scaling Up Toolkit, which provides a step-by-step process to measure FTC scale and capacity; improve identification, referral, and engagement pathways; and identify concrete action steps to ensure access to families in need and increase numbers of families served. Teams will identify significant barriers to increase scale and explore resources to support expansion.
Learning Opportunities
Grantee TTA Projects
OJJDP and CFF currently offer in-depth technical assistance to six Statewide System Improvement Program (SSIP) Awardees: Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New York, and Guam. Find out more about how these states are implementing systems reform to expand FTCs’ scale and scope—increasing FTCs reach into child welfare and substance use disorder treatment systems and ensuring the delivery of a full range of comprehensive services for families.
In 2016 the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention funded 12 FDCs. This funding opportunity aligns with the national FDC movement working to increase FDC’s capacity and scope of services to children and families. Of the 12 new OJJDP grantees, six sites were awarded implementation funding to create new FDC programs within their jurisdictions and six were awarded enhancement funding to expand the capacity and augment services among their existing FDC programs. Three tribal sites were awarded implementation funding to help bring Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts to tribal jurisdictions.
