At KVC, our work has always been rooted in a simple but powerful belief: children are safest and healthiest when they grow up connected to their families and communities. Every day, we partner with child welfare systems, behavioral health treatment providers and communities to strengthen families, prevent trauma and create pathways to long-term wellbeing.

That belief is what led KVC to develop the Safe & Connected™ Practice Model—a research-informed approach designed to help service providers alongside children, youth and families make thoughtful, consistent decisions that prioritize prevention, safety and connection. By focusing on what keeps families strong, rather than reacting only after harm has occurred, the Safe & Connected™ Practice Model helps child welfare and behavioral health systems achieve better outcomes for children and families alike.

Why Prevention Matters in Child Welfare

Child welfare systems across the country face complex challenges. Families are often navigating multiple stressors at once, including poverty, mental health needs, substance use and systemic inequities. When interventions focus only on risk, families can become further distressed and fragmented, sometimes leading to unnecessary involvement with foster care or longer stays away from home.

Prevention services and support changes that. Safe & Connected™ centers prevention by helping care and support teams slow down, think critically and partner with families to identify strengths, build protective factors and address safety concerns early. The result is a more humane, effective system that keeps more families safely together.

What is the Safe & Connected™ Practice Model?

KVC’s Safe & Connected™ Practice Model was developed by Dr. Suzanne Lohrbach. With over 43 years of experience in child, adolescent and adult mental health and child protective services, Dr. Lohrbach serves as the Executive Director for the KVC Institute for Health Systems Innovation.

The KVC Institute is the part of our organization dedicated to training, consultation and research. Each of our 2,800 employees across the country is a vital part of the living, breathing KVC Institute and helps achieve our vision of dramatically improving the lives of children and families.

As KVC’s research-informed practice model, Safe & Connected™ provides a structured framework that guides service providers to be authentic and transparent in how they show up with families, assess safety, share decision-making and involve children, youth, and families in all matters that affect them.

When practitioners use Safe & Connected™ in their daily practice, systems and communities see meaningful results, including:

• Fewer children entering foster care
• Shorter lengths of stay for children who do enter care
• Increased use of kinship placements
• Stronger efforts to keep siblings safely together

“At its core, Safe & Connected™ is about more than just engaging service recipients in the planning, assessment and decisions around their care,” shares Lohrbach. “It’s about involving them in every step of the process and ensuring they have a seat at the table.”

This requires teams to move beyond checklists and compliance to focus on thoughtful decision-making rooted in relationships, equity and child wellbeing.

A Model Grounded in Human Connection

Safe & Connected™ is a practice model that guides service providers in their work to:

• Develop strong, authentic partnerships with the children, youth and families they serve
• Amplify critical thinking and sound decision-making
• Prevent childhood adversity and reduce trauma
• Promote resilience and long-term wellbeing
• Require inclusivity and actively challenge injustice and social oppression
• Ensure the safety and wellbeing of every child and family served

By emphasizing collaboration, respect and transparency, the model empowers families as the experts on their own lives and futures, and guides practitioners and care teams in how to work in partnership to hold safety and belonging as the priorities. 

Partnering with Chapin Hall

To ensure Safe & Connected™ delivers measurable, credible outcomes, KVC partnered with Chapin Hall on a four-year independent evaluation of the model. Chapin Hall is widely recognized as the leading child welfare research organization in the United States, with unmatched expertise and access to national data.

The evaluation is being conducted within the Fairfax County, Virginia child welfare system, one of the nation’s largest and most complex systems. This partnership allows for a rigorous, real-world assessment of how Safe & Connected™ impacts families, practitioners, and systems over time, contributing critical data that can inform child welfare practice nationwide.

Our goal is to list Safe & Connected™ on the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse as an evidence-based practice model. Inclusion would allow states to use federal and state funding to implement the model, significantly expanding its reach. Safe & Connected™ is more than halfway through the process—bringing children, families and professionals closer to accessing this innovative model.

Safe & Connected™ in Action

Department of Family Services (DFS) in Fairfax County, Virginia

The Department of Family Services (DFS) in Fairfax County, Virginia, decided to embed Safe & Connected™ into their daily practice to transform child welfare. Safe & Connected™ was foundational to the DFS centering families in decision-making and valuing their insights on their own lives. Additionally, Safe & Connected™ was selected to align with their goals of improving outcomes for families, supporting clinical practice for staff and improving timeliness and programming.

Further internal collaboration with KVC Institute resulted in the creation of the Safe & Connected™ Practice Guidance Profiles, outlining what optimal practice in child welfare looks like. Fairfax County has demonstrated that relationship-centered practices and partnership with families are a necessary and achievable pathway to systemic change.

Collaborative Assessment & Management of Suicidality (CAMS)

Collaborative Assessment & Management of Suicidality (CAMS) provides a structured, compassionate framework for addressing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. As an evidence-informed approach, it aligns well with Safe & Connected™.

KVC Health Systems integrated the Safe & Connected™ practice model with the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) by creating a joint consultation led by practitioners trained in both approaches, allowing clinical work and team decision‑making to reinforce one another. CAMS provided the therapist and youth with a clear, step‑by‑step way to understand what was driving the youth’s suicidal thoughts and to build a stabilization plan based on what the youth said they needed to feel safe.

Safe & Connected™ then broadened this work by inviting the youth and therapist into a collaborative consultation where the young person was empowered as the expert on their own life, leading the team to build a fuller picture of their supports, trauma history, strengths, and protective factors while thinking together about next steps.

This integration has helped team members slow down, share information more openly, and make decisions with youth —not about youth. For youth, it has created a more respectful and empowering experience in which their voice shapes both the understanding of their situation and the plan for moving forward, including their goal of meaningful service relationship closure and a clearer sense of how to carry their strengths into independent living and future connections.

Expanding Impact Through the KVC Institute

The KVC Institute for Health Systems Innovation, powered by KVC Health Systems, supports the implementation and growth of Safe & Connected™ across the globe. Through consultation, technical assistance, training and professional development, Dr. Lohrbach has partnered with child welfare and behavioral health systems in 17 U.S. states and seven other countries.

These efforts focus on transforming service system designs through strengthening collaborative practice and family involvement, and improving outcomes through education on adversity, trauma and resilience — ensuring that research translates into real-world change for children and families.

Safe & Connected™ represents KVC’s commitment to prevention, connection and evidence-based practice—today and for the future. If you, your organization or your government are interested in learning how Safe & Connected™ can support children and families in your community, contact Dr. Suzanne Lohrbach at slohrbach@kvc.org.