The Coalition for Family & Children’s Services in Iowa (the Coalition) mission is to enhance the collective impact of member agencies’ services to children and families. At our core, we are an alliance of organizations across Iowa's 99 counties, forming a robust safety net for children and youth facing the threats of abuse, neglect, or delinquency, and those with mental health or substance abuse needs.
Our membership includes 22 agencies providing a range of mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice and other social services to children and families in need. Specifically, many agencies have served their communities for generations and offer a continuum of services including: crisis intervention; Family Safety, Risk and Permanency; Behavioral Health Intervention Services (BHIS); foster family care recruitment and retention; foster group care; emergency shelters; emergency services; delinquency prevention: detention; maternal and child health care; day care; psychiatric medical institutions; day treatment; independent living; nutrition; teen parenting; and special needs adoptions. Each year our member agencies touch the lives of over 200,000 children and families.
The Coalition is involved in the following state agencies’ initiatives, policies, budget and administrative rules:
- Department Health of Human Services;
- Division of Adult, Children & Family Service
- Division of Field Operations
- Division of Mental Health & Disability Services
- Iowa Medicaid Enterprise
- Judicial Branch (Juvenile Court)
- Children’s Justice Initiative
- Department of Public Health
- Iowa Department of Education
The Coalition has prided itself in working effectively with state departments to promote best practice and advance good public policy that also serve the interest of its members’ work with families.
Through a public private partnership, we strive to improve the quality and accessibility of these services and work to positively impact public policy working in close connection with state agencies and legislative leaders.
