Two Strategic Focus Areas
Human-centered, innovative solutions aligned with the Flourish Fund Children & Families Initiative for transforming foster care and strengthening families.
Preventing Family Separation
Innovative solutions that strengthen at-risk families before crisis occurs
The Challenge:
How might we strengthen families before they reach the point of crisis, ensuring that Tarrant County's low removal rate reflects genuine family stability?
Why This Matters:
Tarrant County's foster care removal rate is among the lowest in the country, suggesting that many families are being supported before children enter care. The opportunity now is to strengthen the systems, relationships, and community supports that help families remain stable and connected long before a crisis occurs. Strong families are rarely built by a single program. They thrive when parents and caregivers have access to practical resources, trusted relationships, community support, and timely help during difficult seasons.
What We're Looking For:
We are seeking innovative solutions that help families access support before challenges escalate. This may include family navigation and care coordination, church and community support networks, peer support models, resource connection platforms, housing or economic stability interventions, or other approaches that strengthen families and reduce the likelihood of foster care involvement.
Examples of Prevention Innovation
- Meeting Basic Needs: Safe housing, food security, transportation, childcare, employment, emergency financial assistance
- Strengthening Relationships: Family and social connections, mentors, peer support, community belonging, faith community
- Supporting Parents & Caregivers: Parenting and caregiver coaching, respite care, mental health support, substance use recovery, practical help
- Connecting Families to Resources: Care navigation, advocacy, benefits access, coordinated support across systems
Kinship Care
Innovative tools and support models, including technology-enabled solutions, that help support kinship caregivers to reconnect foster children to their family.
The Challenge:
How might we identify, engage, and support kinship caregivers earlier so that more children can safely remain connected to family and community?
Why This Matters:
Research consistently shows that when children cannot safely remain with their parents, placement with relatives or trusted adults often leads to better outcomes. Children are more likely to maintain family connections, remain connected to their community and culture, and experience greater stability. In Tarrant County, approximately 36% of children entering care are placed with kinship caregivers, compared to roughly 50% across the broader region. This gap presents an opportunity to identify and support family connections earlier.
What We're Looking For:
We are seeking innovative approaches that help locate relatives sooner, remove barriers to kinship placement, and provide the practical, relational, legal, or financial support caregivers need to succeed. Solutions may include technology-enabled tools, family-finding strategies, caregiver support models, church-based support networks, financial assistance programs, or other approaches that strengthen kinship care.
Example Innovations
- Family Finding: Technology tools, family search specialists, genogram and mapping tools, community discovery models
- Kinship Navigation: Navigators, resource hubs, care coordination, peer support with lived experience
- Financial & Legal: Emergency funds, benefit enrollment, legal assistance, simplified pathways
- Caregiver Well-Being: Support groups, mental health, respite care, coaching
- Child & Family Connections: Sibling support, visitation, cultural ties, family engagement
- Community & Church: Volunteer networks, faith-based wraparound, mentorship, care teams
Cross-Cutting Themes
Across all focus areas, successful solutions will demonstrate:
Whole Family Approach
Solutions strengthen entire families in addition to supporting children
Church & Faith Engagement
Ability to mobilize or partner with faith communities
Redemptive Orientation
Focus on restoration and healing, not just crisis response
Collaborative Spirit
Commitment to field-building and sharing learnings
Does Your Solution Fit?
Check eligibility requirements and selection criteria to see if your organization is a strong match for this challenge.
View Eligibility Requirements