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Community Pathway

Turning Vision into Action - Highlights from 2025

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Building Stronger Futures for San Francisco Families

Every family deserves support before a crisis happens.
In 2025, Safe & Sound advanced a bold vision to reimagine how families in San Francisco access the support they need to thrive. Through the Community Pathway Initiative, we are helping build a trusted, community-based system of care that connects families to support before crises escalate.
Rooted in prevention, dignity, and family-centered care, the Community Pathway brings together Family Resource Centers, schools, healthcare providers, and community organizations to ensure families can access holistic support without unnecessary involvement in child welfare systems.
This work reflects a growing belief that stronger futures are built through trust, connection, and community, not surveillance or punishment.

What Is the Community Pathway?

The Community Pathway connects children, parents, and caregivers to culturally responsive, community-based support without direct involvement from child welfare systems.
Rather than waiting until families reach a crisis, the pathway helps identify needs early and connect families to the right resources at the right time. These services include housing assistance, parenting support, mental health services, substance use treatment, and other basic needs resources.
The pathway is built on a simple belief: families do better when communities support them early, compassionately, and collaboratively.

Why This Work Matters

For too long, systems have responded only after harm has occurred. Today, there is growing recognition that prevention is both more humane and more effective.
The need for this shift is urgent. In San Francisco, thousands of children and families are impacted by child abuse and neglect each year. In 2025, 4,288 reports of child abuse and neglect were made, with 431 children confirmed as survivors of abuse or neglect. The estimated cumulative financial impact of verified child abuse survivors in San Francisco is $333 million, reflecting the significant human and community cost when families do not receive support early.
Local leadership and support for prevention are creating local, state and federal initiatives, including the Families First Prevention Services Act, which are opening new opportunities to invest in community-based care that supports families earlier and more effectively.
390
reports of child abuse and neglect were made
390
children confirmed as survivors of abuse or neglect
$257.000.000
The estimated cumulative financial impact of verified child abuse survivors in San Francisco

Safe & Sound’s Role

As the backbone organization of the San Francisco Family Services Alliance, Safe & Sound has helped lay the foundation for the Community Pathway by:
  • Representing Family Resource Centers in San Francisco’s Families First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) planning and implementation
  • Leading efforts to reform California’s mandated reporting system toward a more community-centered approach
  • Strengthening the sustainability and capacity of Family Resource Centers
  • Providing training and technical assistance to providers across the city
  • Advocating for policies that support prevention-focused, family-centered care
Together with our partners, we are building a more connected system of support that helps families access care early and thrive before crises occur.
0
Number of Individuals Served through Family Services Alliance (All service types)
0
Number of Individuals Served through Family Services Alliance (direct children/family services)
"My mother raised three daughters on an elementary education and an extraordinary amount of love. We made it because of the village around her, the people and organizations who stepped in when she needed them. Not every family has that village. The Community Pathway is how we build it intentionally in San Francisco, weaving together the people, organizations, and resources families need so that support is there long before challenges become overwhelming. My hope is that every family across this city feels held by that village and knows they were never meant to navigate hardship alone."
Kula Koenig
Chief Policy Officer, Safe & Sound

The Path Ahead

The Community Pathway is more than a program, it is a shift in how San Francisco supports families. In 2025, thousands of families across the city accessed support through trusted community partners before reaching a point of crisis. Every connection made, every family stabilized, and every crisis prevented helps build a stronger future for children and families across San Francisco. Stronger futures are built together.
An illustrative example of the community pathway
An illustrative example of the community pathway

Strengthening Systems to Support Families

Building the Community Pathway requires more than program innovation. Creating stronger futures requires more than direct services. It also requires changes to the policies, funding structures, and systems that shape how families access support.
Throughout 2025, Safe & Sound worked alongside local, state, and national partners to advance policies that help families access support earlier and reduce unnecessary involvement with child welfare.

A Landmark Win for Families

One of the most significant milestones of the year was the passage of Senate Bill 119, a major step in California's shift from a mandated reporting system to a community-supporting one. Building on years of advocacy, the legislation now requires that mandated reporters have clear information about community-based resources available to families, helping connect parents and caregivers to support before challenges become crises.

Looking Ahead

Safe & Sound is also actively working towards a community-based alternative pathway for families who do not need child welfare involvement but do need support.

Advocacy Impact Across Levels

This year, our advocacy also achieved:
  • Federal recognition: Family Resource Centers are now formally defined in federal statute through the Supporting America's Children and Families Act
  • Housing stability: Helped secure over $40 million in housing investments for families in need
  • Child care and training: Advanced legislation expanding child care access and improving how mandated reporters are trained to connect families to community support
  • Sustained local funding: Secured critical funding increases for family-serving organizations and restored legal services funding for families
  • Community presence: Led San Francisco's Child Abuse Prevention Month and helped preserve key local commissions serving children and families
As a member of California's Mandated Reporting Advisory Committee and backbone of the San Francisco Family Services Alliance, Safe & Sound continues to help shape a future where families are met with care and connection
Together, these efforts are building a more responsive and equitable system, one that supports families early, strengthens communities, and creates lasting change for generations to come.
During Child Abuse Prevention Month, Safe & Sound staff gathered at San Francisco City Hall, illuminated in blue, to raise awareness and advocate for policies that strengthen support for children and families

Stronger Futures, Built on Evidence

Alongside this systems work, Safe & Sound is also contributing to research that strengthens trauma-informed care. Safe & Sound’s commitment to preventing childhood trauma is grounded not only in direct service but also in rigorous research that strengthens how systems respond to children and families.
In 2025, our Center for Youth Wellness program published findings from the Trauma-Informed Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Screening and Intervention Evaluation (TASIE) project in the peer-reviewed article in the international journal on children’s health ‘Children’ as part of a special issue on Adverse Childhood Experiences: Assessment and Long-Term Outcomes.
The TASIE project was a three-year study exploring how ACEs and toxic stress screening can be integrated into healthcare settings, and how early identification of adversity can improve long-term outcomes for children and families.
The publication highlights key lessons on identifying childhood adversity and understanding its impact on health, well-being, and development over time. These findings contribute to a growing field of trauma-informed care focused on prevention, early intervention, and stronger coordination between healthcare and community-based supports.
By sharing this work through an international peer-reviewed journal, Safe & Sound is helping advance evidence-based approaches to addressing childhood trauma and strengthening systems of care for families.
"We have known for decades that early adversity shapes a child's entire trajectory. What we needed was evidence showing systems how to act on that knowledge. sooner, together, and with families at the center. TASIE gives us that. And sharing it with the world means more children, in more communities, have a fighting chance."
Dr. Pegah Faed
CEO, Safe & Sound