Alliance for Strong Families and Communities

Jennifer Jones will be the new chief strategy officer for Prevent Child Abuse America, leaving her position as director of the Change in Mind Institute at the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities.

Two significant organizations in the fields of social, health and human services have agreed in principle to a merger early next year.  The boards of the Milwaukee-based Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and the New York City-based Council on Accreditation announced Tuesday that they had signed a nonbinding letter of intent to combine forces if due diligence, now underway, doesn’t surface any unforeseen issues. 

The airline, restaurant and hotel industries are being battered by a lack of customers. The healthcare industry is bracing for a frightening surge in usage that will likely present challenges to the capacity of hospitals and other medical centers. 

The Department of Justice is moving forward with a $7 million initiative to prevent and to better address the most serious and devastating outcomes of child maltreatment. The Child Safety Forward initiative will pair a technical assistance network with five sites over a three-year period to “develop multidisciplinary strategies and responses” that “address serious or near-death injuries as a result of child abuse or neglect and to reduce the number of child fatalities,” according to a statement put out last month by the Justice Department.

Susan Dreyfus, CEO for Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, will step down in 2020, the organization announced this week. “I’ve been talking with the board about this transition for much of the year,” Dreyfus said in a press release.

The Council on Accreditation (COA) was founded in 1977 by the Child Welfare League of America and Family Service America (now the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities) to ensure a set of standards are met by human services agencies.

In August, Youth Services Insider reported on a leadership shakeup at the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. The entire staff of the Washington, D.C., office was let go as the membership organization, which represents hundreds of family and youth services agencies around the country, sought to rebuild its Beltway presence.

In August, the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities laid off the staff of its headquarters in Washington, D.C., signaling plans for a change in the way the membership organization did business in the nation’s capital.

The Family First Prevention Services Act, which was signed into law as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act on February 9, 2018, offers an historic opportunity for child welfare leaders to re-imagine a child welfare system for the 21st century.