Chapin Hall

There is growing evidence that housing instability and family homelessness are key drivers of child welfare system contact. To keep families together, states must think differently about how to address housing challenges and increase collaboration between public agencies. To help state housing and child welfare leadership teams do this, Casey Family Programs, Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), and Chapin Hall convened a 6-month national learning collaborative in 2025 called the “Housing as a Foundational Element of Family Well-Being Cohort.”

The cohort included cross-sector leadership from New Jersey, Colorado, Kentucky, and Oregon. CSH, Chapin Hall, and Casey Family Programs provided peer learning and collaboration opportunities through monthly cohort meetings and tailored technical assistance in individual state sessions. Each state hosted a meeting to share how their agencies work together, surface current challenges, and highlight innovations and promising initiatives. A central value was breaking down siloes and creating space for shared problem-solving that individual agencies cannot achieve on their own.

Participants identified these common challenges:

• limited affordable housing for low-income families
• insufficient homelessness prevention programs
• constrained cross-system data sharing processes
• lack of consistent trainings and support for the child welfare workforce to help families navigate housing issues

State teams are facing these challenges amid a shifting funding and policy landscape, but the cohort highlighted that jurisdictions are stepping up to find solutions despite the uncertainty of the moment. Teams identified a range of promising strategies to help meet families’ housing needs, including:

• continuing collaboration across state teams and projects
• blending and braiding funding streams
• developing joint messaging for policymakers
• leveraging Medicaid 1115 waivers
• codesigning policy with housing and federal partners

Each state team left the learning collaborative with actionable next steps to apply to their work. To support other states in being catalysts for change, Chapin Hall, CSH, and Casey Family Programs translated the project findings into a report, which contains a Menu of Housing Interventions for Families Worksheet and Library of Resources that partners shared during meetings. These resources can help other leaders evaluate their local housing resources, identify gaps, and develop targeted strategies to keep families stably housed.

Chapin Hall brings deep expertise in child welfare policy, systems change, and evidence translation to learning collaboratives like this one. With a longstanding commitment to advancing equitable systems and scaling evidence-based solutions, Chapin Hall helps public agencies and their partners connect research evidence to the decisions and investments that improve outcomes for children and families. To learn more about this work or explore how to apply these resources in your state or organization, contact Krista Thomas.