National Partner Organizations

National Alliance of Children’s Trust & Prevention Funds

Mission: The mission of the Alliance is to initiate and engage in efforts that assist state Children’s Trust Funds (CTFs) in strengthening families to prevent child abuse and neglect. This includes promoting and supporting a system of services, laws, practices and attitudes that supports families by enabling them to provide their children with safe, healthy and nurturing childhoods.


Work: The Alliance is the only national organization that provides support to all aspects of the work of the state Children’s Trust Funds and represents their voice in national policy and practice discussions. The Alliance supports peer consultation and collaboration among CTFs, enabling them to share resources and information with one another; conducts strengths and needs assessments; provides training and technical assistance; and is a strong national voice for strengthening families through community-based strategies.

Collectively, CTFs comprise the nation’s largest funders of community-based family strengthening/child abuse prevention strategies, funding literally thousands of programs, trainings, public awareness campaigns and other areas of work. CTFs make a unique and valuable contribution to child abuse prevention in their states. They have a tremendous ability to shape their state’s prevention agendas, promote new prevention concepts, disseminate critical information and research findings and ensure that proven effective strategies are available to families and children. They are strong voices and vital leaders of family strengthening/ child abuse prevention in their states. They have enormous influence and the power to make significant positive impacts on the lives of the children and families that are served each year by the programs they fund.

Many CTFs have embraced the Strengthening Families framework as an excellent opportunity to further their mission of strengthening and supporting families. The Alliance is pleased to support this work in all ways possible.


Reach: Almost every state has a CTF. Through the Alliance’s Early Childhood Initiative, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, most state CTFs participated in training on the Strengthening Families framework and principles. Seed grants were given to nine state CTFs and their partners to implement strategies to develop and expand Strengthening Families activities in their states. These nine states are: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Washington.

In addition, a broader Learning Community consists of these nine states and others that work to achieve specified goals related to Strengthening Families. The additional states in the Alliance Learning Community are: Alabama, Alaska, District of Columbia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Tennessee. Other CTFs receive information on the Early Childhood Initiative/Strengthening Families and are invited to participate in trainings and other activities.

Strengthening Families: The Alliance’s Early Childhood Initiative strives to increase implementation of effective child abuse prevention/family strengthening strategies by deeply embedding the Strengthening Families Protective Factors framework throughout all systems that touch the lives of young children and their families. With the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Alliance and CTFs are taking leadership roles in partnership with state and national early childhood leaders, child welfare agencies, policymakers, parent leaders and other funders to implement the Early Childhood Initiative, and therefore the Strengthening Families framework, through:

• Building strong state coalitions
• Identifying and funding exemplary learning centers
• Promoting partnerships with parents in all aspects of planning, implementation and evaluation
• Developing curricula and tools
• Implementing innovative models of systems collaboration
• Collecting and analyzing data to track systemic changes
• Convening national conversations to reframe child abuse prevention

Technical Assistance: The Alliance offers training and technical assistance to CTFs and their partners upon request in all aspects related to the implementation of Strengthening Families. Some of the areas where we offer special expertise are:

• Partnerships with state early education care systems
• Partnerships with parents
• Strategies for building Strengthening Families leadership teams
• Applicability of Protective Factors framework across early childhood systems
• Partnerships with Child Welfare
• The linkages between strengthening families and child abuse prevention