Accelerating Community Connections and Enhancing Service Systems Project (ACCESS) - The Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF), the Title IV-E agency, has long been a national leader in strengthening prevention systems to ensure A Home for Every Child. Kansas was one of the first states to launch an approved state prevention plan under the 2018 federal Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First). Leveraging new and existing infrastructure, Kansas has successfully delivered Family First services to over 9,000 families since our launch in 2019, achieving significantly improved child and family outcomes, including twice the odds that children served remain safely together with their family without need for foster care one year later. However, despite this clear success, only 40% of Family First services delivered in Kansas have been federally reimbursed, limiting the state’s ability to fully leverage available federal resources and maximize the return on public investments in child and family well-being. The Kansas DCF application to the Title IV-E Prevention Accelerator Grants proposes the Accelerating Community Connections and Enhancing Service Systems Project, or ACCESS. Access will support the design, implementation, and evaluation of system-level solutions that strengthen DCF capacity and address the implementation challenges of Family First. Kansas’ approved prevention plan blends an array of federally reimbursed and state supported programs that are not yet approved by the Title IV-E Clearinghouse. Though critical to our prevention mission and meeting local priorities and need, state supported programs are currently not federally reimbursed. ACCESS will strengthen agency-level capacity to draw down sustainable Title IV-E funding by 1) fully operationalizing, integrating, and delivering Motivational Interviewing (MI) within four state-funded programs; and 2) leveraging this integration to refine data systems for eligibility determinations, claims processing, service delivery tracking, and outcome measurement for all Family First services. ACCESS will leverage MI installment and our existing functional system prototype supporting automated workflows, closed-loop referrals, and bi-directional data exchange, to build a secure and integrated data system linking state administrators, local programs, and evaluators. Together these activities and infrastructure will increase state capacity for drawing-down funds by onboarding previously unaligned entities into common systems and formalizing systems to support an additional desired service pathway. The project includes an implementation-focused evaluation to assess: 1) family engagement, participation, and completion as MI and expanded referral pathways are implemented; 2) the extent to which project activities strengthen provider capacity, referral pathways, data infrastructure, and claiming readiness; and 3) how enhanced infrastructure expands access to prevention services and supports sustainable reimbursement. ACCESS provides an innovative opportunity to improve system coordination, expand access to prevention services, and generate transferable tools and implementation lessons for national Family First implementation.
