The Trump administration recently announced the launch of “America.gov,” an all-in-one website designed to give Americans a single place to find the government resources they need.
That same principle—bringing fragmented government services together behind a single door—was central to legislation we passed during my time as deputy secretary of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. The landmark “One Door to Work” initiative aligned workforce and social service programs behind a single entity, making it easier for people to navigate the government services available to them and point them to work. This same initiative has served as the framework for social services in Utah since the 1990s, which state leaders often credit as their reason for being number one in the nation for upward mobility.
When people are in distress, whether due to unemployment, underemployment, or family crisis, the programs designed to help them should be easy to find, access, and understand.
Utah, Louisiana, and now the federal government have recognized the value of this approach. Do we recognize the same opportunity to embrace this approach in child welfare?
Few responsibilities entrusted to government are more consequential than protecting a child from abuse or neglect. When a family enters the child welfare system, parents and caregivers may have to navigate caseworkers, courts, service providers that often live separate from transitional safety net services, health professionals, and multiple government agencies—often at the same time and during one of the most stressful periods of their lives.
Yet the systems intended to help them can be fragmented across departments and agencies, with resources difficult to find and little connection between one service and the next. A parent should not have to understand the structure of government to access the help their family needs. And a caseworker should not have to navigate a maze of disconnected systems to identify the resources available to a child or family.
An “America.gov” approach to child welfare would not require creating a new government agency. Instead, it would create a single, accessible door to the services and information families and child welfare professionals already rely on. A parent could use one platform to identify available services, determine eligibility, and connect with the appropriate provider, while a caseworker could use the same system to see what resources are available to a family and coordinate services across agencies.
It could connect families and child welfare professionals to services ranging from housing and employment assistance to behavioral health care, substance-use treatment, parenting support, and other interventions that can address the underlying circumstances placing a child at risk. The earlier a family can access the right support, the greater the opportunity to address those challenges before they escalate into a child protection crisis.
The goal should not be to create another website or another layer of bureaucracy. It should be to connect families and professionals to the services already available across government without forcing them to navigate the structure of government themselves or rely on entry into a system to then be handed a sheet of paper with “resources” on it.
This is not simply a question of convenience. In child welfare, fragmented systems can mean fragmented information, delayed services, and poor coordination between the people responsible for helping a family. When the stakes include whether a child can safely remain with his or her family, government should make it as easy as possible for families and professionals to identify and act on the right intervention at the right time.
If we are serious about transforming child welfare, we should look beyond individual programs and ask whether the system itself is designed to help families succeed. Every decision in child welfare can shape the life of a child. Government should ensure its own systems are working together to give families the best possible chance of achieving safety and stability.