Overview
The CFWB Department is the County’s new approach to empowering children, youth, and families to have the support, connections, and resources to be healthy and remain together without system involvement.
The County developed CFWB to shift how families and communities are supported from the ground up. We want to prevent children and youth from entering the child welfare system and create a partnership with families, relying on their experience, to hold them as the experts in keeping their children safe.
The new department integrates the First 5 Commission of San Diego, Child Welfare Services, childcare services, and other critical resources to partner with children, youth, and families.
Our goal
Our goal is to focus on equity, prevention, and supporting families before foster care becomes necessary to keep children safe.
What we hope to achieve:
- Keep families together.
- Hold the family’s voice as the expert in how to best keep their children safe.
- Provide family strengthening and prevention services to families in a more holistic, equitable, and integrated way.
- Reduce unnecessary child protective actions that have historically harmed and separated families.
Our programs
The department is made up of various programs to provide the appropriate supports to families.
Office of Child and Family Strengthening
OCFS focuses on helping all families and ensuring fair opportunities for wellness to strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect.
- Prevention and Early Intervention Services: Helps connect families to resources early on, so children stay safe, families get the support they need, and communities have fair and healthy opportunities for everyone.
- Child Care System Coordination: Helps expand and support child care providers while making sure all families have fair access to quality early learning and care.
First 5 San Diego
First 5 promotes the health and well-being of children ages 0-5 and pregnant individuals during the most critical years of development.
Child and Family Well-Being
CFWB focuses on cases of child abuse and neglect using traditional methods to reduce and prevent mistreatment of children, such as:
- Emergency Response (Child Abuse Investigations)—Looks into reports of possible child abuse or neglect and decides if more help is needed to protect the child.
- Foster Care and Adoption Services— Social workers work closely with the courts and legal partners to keep children with relatives whenever possible and to help families come back together, always putting the child’s safety and well-being first.
- Extended Foster Care—Gives young people ages 18 to 21 continued care and services to help them move successfully into adulthood.
- Placement and Supportive Services— Finds and supports foster families and helps social workers place children in homes that are the best fit for them.
- Youth Strengthening and Shelter Programs
- Polinsky Children’s Center – A short-term shelter (up to 10 days) that provides care and support for children who have been placed in protective custody.
- San Pasqual Academy – A campus for youth ages 12 to 19 in foster care that offers a safe home, personalized education, and life skills to help them prepare for adulthood.
