About

Theory of Change

If we collaborate at the state and county level to align funding, priorities, regulations, outcome measures, and implementation – across sectors and across jurisdictions – we can create a strong family well-being system that supports families.

By doing this, family and community factors that build protective capacity against maltreatment will be enhanced and risk factors reduced—including outcomes related to child well-being and achievement, caregiver well-being and achievement, consistent high-quality caregiving, and safe and supportive neighborhoods.

​By aligning our work and learning from and with one another, we can significantly reduce child fatalities and child maltreatment for all children zero to five by positively and proactively supporting strong and healthy family formation.

Our Structure

The Colorado Partnership for Thriving Families is supported by Illuminate Colorado to organize and coordinate our partners throughout the state. The role of Illuminate Colorado is to maintain the structure of the partnership by providing the tools to share knowledge, aligning decisions and efforts across our communities and systems, and clearly defining the steps we will take together to achieve our goals.

If we think of a family like a community garden, it takes a group of people working together to help enrich the soil, encouraging the garden to grow and thrive. The Partnership is continually working to cultivate the garden, in this case by expanding and intentionally fostering broad cross-sector coalitions that include health care, housing, public health, community-based organizations, philanthropic partners, and others who share our vision and are committed to improving child well-being. Together, we can work with families to provide the nutrient-rich soil for our garden to thrive.

Priorities

The three priority areas of the Partnership are:

• Systems Alignment: Align state and county human services, public health, and health care systems to place family well-being at the center.
• Early Touchpoints: Strengthen the family well-being system service array to improve outcomes for parents and infants throughout pregnancy and up to age 1.
• Community Norms: Change community norms related to social connectedness to increase access to information on child development and support with parenting with the intent to reduce parental stress and decrease child maltreatment.