Collaboration
The Child Welfare Division of the Commission funds both statewide and community-based programs focused on strengthening families, child abuse and neglect prevention and intervention. This division engages in a federally mandated comprehensive 3 Year Assessment of child welfare laws, policies, and procedures, and identifies areas needing reform. Commission staff serves as the Arkansas representative on a national child welfare listserv for the Children’s Bureau, to respond with state-specific research, policy, and legislative inquiries from other states, and researches and develops training resources specific to training audience by request.
The Commission provides staff support and consultation to the Arkansas Infant and Child Death Review Program and serves as the ACCARDV representative on Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) External Child Death and Near-Death Committee. Commission staff is also responsible for completing and reporting on performance indicators related to child abuse training in DCFS Social Services Block Grant (SSBG)
ACCARDV staff reviews and makes policy recommendations by request, for schools, churches, childcare centers and non-profits on child maltreatment and mandated reporting issues.
Training
ACCARDV reviews and approves professional development curriculum for licensed educators on child maltreatment and mandated reporting. The Child Welfare Division provides in-person or virtual training on child maltreatment issues to mandated reporters by request. ACCARDV staff have provided in-person training to more than 20,000 mandated reporters over the last 20 years. The Commission also serves as the Arkansas administrator for a web-based mandated reporter training completed by 214,487 Arkansans since 2015 and responds to content questions from participants and makes referrals to the contracted help desk when necessary.
Child Welfare Division staff serves as the content consultant for an online child maltreatment professional development provided to 78,699 licensed educators on Arkansas Internet Delivered Education for Arkansas Schools (AR IDEAS) since 2018. The Child Welfare Division staff is currently consulting on a content update for mandated training required during the 2024-2025 school year.
Funding
Since 2022, the Commission has funded 34 Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Grants impacting communities in Arkansas. Programs are selected through a Request for Proposal process. Current grantees were funded July 1, 2024, under a two-year agreement based on eligibility of funds. Commission staff develops and provides training and technical assistance to CAN Prevention applicants, serves as staff and administrative support to the CAN Prevention funding committee, and receives and reviews quarterly CAN Prevention program reports to ensure programmatic compliance with the funded proposal. A press release listing all 2024-2026 Child Abuse & Neglect Prevention programs can be found here.
Examples of other programs funded by ACCARDV include co-sponsorship of the Arkansas Infant and Child Death Review Team Conference, which provides free training to first responders and other professionals who serve on the review teams.
The Commission also recently funded a project developed by Partners for Inclusive Communities, a statewide organization providing services to people with disabilities. The project purpose was improving the capacity of the child welfare system in Arkansas to respond to the needs of children with disabilities who have experienced abuse or trauma. The collaboration between Partners and the Department of Human Services during this project led to the development of the Prevention Pilot Program for Children and Families. The Child Welfare Division is currently working on an expansion of the existing online training platform to support the development and provision of additional online training created by content experts in the child welfare field in Arkansas. This division of ACCARDV also funds a project to provide sub-grants to agencies, non-profits and institutes of higher education to develop training and programs to increase high quality legal representation in court intervention in a manner which reduces additional trauma to the child victim and their family while ensuring procedural fairness to the accused, provide free training, technical assistance and case consultation. Contact them at williamsonsherryj@uams.edu.