Greetings – For 100 years, The Duke Endowment has supported grantees and partners to enrich lives and strengthen communities for generations of Carolinians.

This newsletter highlights the Endowment’s Child & Family Well-Being advocacy and communication grantmaking strategy and initial priorities, outlined below after a year-long review. The efforts of state policymakers, advocacy groups, and other organizations are critical to help children in the Carolinas grow up in families safe from maltreatment and supported by nurturing parents and caring adults.

Thanks for joining us on this collective journey—and we look forward to your feedback on our direction.

Phil Redmond, Director

Tamika Williams, Associate Director

Christina DiSalvo, Program Officer

Kate Gaskin, Senior Coordinator

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Our Advocacy Priorities

• Supporting kin-first approaches
• Addressing contributing factors to involvement in the child welfare system
• Improving access to effective youth mental health services 

The Duke Endowment will assess goals, plan activities and action steps, and track progress, successes, and learnings along the way. We’ll continue to share our insights with Policy Pulse readers.

Priority: Putting Kinship Care First

Our focus:

• Develop implementation infrastructure for state kinship navigation models 
• Create strategies for more robust identification and licensure of relatives
• Work to expand licensure reimbursement to include supportive adults considered family by children, also referred to as fictive kin 

Priority: Addressing Contributing Factors to Child Welfare System Involvement

Our focus:

• Support preventive legal advocacy that reduces court involvement and improves outcomes for families by addressing issues of poverty correlated with neglect, an area of greatest need for low-income North Carolinians.
• Partner with JusticeMatters, which develop and test a legal representation model that provides trauma-informed child custody or adoption services for low-income kinship caregivers, and Pisgah Legal Services, which provide free, voluntary legal services for families where there is an active neglect investigation.
• Explore a new pathway connecting families screened out by social services to voluntary services through the OPT-In for Families initiative, a joint funding effort with the Doris Duke Foundation.

Priority: Improving Access to Effective Youth Mental Health Services

Our focus:

• As part of our DEI commitments, we funded the Institute for Child Success to analyze evidence-based models supported by Child and Family Well-Being to ensure they improve outcomes for minority populations. The findings confirmed the strength of programs like Incredible Years, Strengthening Families, and Multisystemic Therapy in improving outcomes for minority populations.
• We are continuing to explore the impact of other evidence-based models for minority populations. 

• A Rare Glimpse of American Unity
• NC Department of Health and Human Services Child Behavioral Health Dashboard
• Family First Prevention Services Act: Legislative Hearing