Chapin Hall

Chapin Hall works with partners in the field to apply evidence to practice. Research lays the groundwork for knowing what works best to support children and families, and rigorous evaluation provides a continuous check on the quality and impact of those services. 

Chapin Hall is collaborating with developer and purveyor Dr. Suzanne Lohrbach, Executive Director for the KVC Institute for Health Systems Innovation to apply this approach to the Safe & Connected™ Practice Model. The practice model can be used with community providers, cultural networks, and other community resources as a way of preventing system involvement and safeguarding children, older youth, adults, and families collectively across generations. Ultimately, the goal is to establish an evidence base for the Safe & Connected practice Model so it can be reviewed and considered for inclusion within the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. 

Evidence-based programs ensure that interventions are effective and can lead to better outcomes for the communities they serve. In addition, state child welfare agencies can claim reimbursement for programs and services rated as promising, supported, or well-supported in the Clearinghouse. 

Safe & Connected™ offers human service practitioners a best practice, research-driven, prevention-minded assessment process, where partnership with the family in critical thinking and planning is key to keeping children safely with their families and communities, reducing the need for child welfare contact and future involvement.   

There are six Basic Tenets that are foundational to the Safe & Connected™ practice model:  

The Safe & Connected™ practice model’s Consultation and Information Sharing Framework® provides a process and structure for dialogue, inquiry, organization, and analysis of information for service providers, family, and their support system. The Framework® includes nine critical components:   

Safe & Connected™ and the Consultation and Information Sharing Framework®  

• can be used across a wide variety of service sectors to promote improved health and wellbeing outcomes, 

• provides practice guidance on how to meaningfully, respectfully, and authentically engage and interact with others to make decisions in more inclusive, well informed, and collaborative ways, and   

• is grounded in important values of curiosity and conversation, social justice, equity, inclusivity, perspective taking, knowledge building, and participation – always communicating “I see you” and “I hear you.”   

In the first phase of the project, Chapin Hall experts collaborated with Dr. Lohrbach to co-create a manualized version of Safe & Connected™ that breaks down each Basic Tenet and Framework critical component, illustrating how each will be achieved.   

In the second phase, Chapin Hall and Dr. Lohrbach will conduct a quasi-experimental evaluation to rigorously study all aspects of the Safe & Connected™ practice model in Fairfax County, Virginia. Depending on the results of the evaluation, the project team hopes to recommend the model for review to the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse.   

To learn more about this project and Chapin Hall’s practice model work, please contact the project principal investigator Jennifer O’Brien.