The Department of Children and Families works in partnership with local communities to protect the vulnerable, promote strong and economically self-sufficient families, and advance personal and family recovery and resiliency.

The department organizes its activities around services for various client populations.

• Economic Self-Sufficiency. The Economic Self-Sufficiency Services Office serves individuals and families on the road to economic recovery and promotes strong and economically self-sufficient communities through programs such as Temporary Cash Assistance (known federally as TANF), Food Assistance (known federally as SNAP), and Medicaid. The Office is also responsible for the Homelessness Program, Public Benefits Integrity, and Refugee Services.
• Family Safety. These services provide for the safety, protection, care, and well-being of children and vulnerable adults. The program includes six service components: Child Welfare, Background Screening, Child Care Regulation, Domestic Violence, Florida Abuse Hotline, and Adult Protective Services.
• Mental Health Hospitals. The Mental Health Hospitals provide services to adults with mental illness in forensic and civil mental health treatment and sexually violent predators in the Florida Civil Commitment program.
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Community Services. Substance abuse and mental health is responsible for the oversight of a statewide system of care for the prevention, treatment, and recovery of children and adults with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse disorders services.

Quality Office. The DCF Accountability Act, signed into law in 2020, established the Quality Office within the department, which is responsible for developing and implementing uniform, outcome-based performance metrics to monitor both internal programs and contracted vendors throughout the state. As of December 2020, the Quality Office had reviewed over 1,700 open child welfare cases and developed processes to enhance child safety in real time.

Family First Prevention Services Act. The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) of 2018 included provisions to help prevent children from entering foster care by allowing federal reimbursements for evidence-based mental health services, substance use treatment, and in-home parenting skills training. The Act also limits the use of residential group care for children and youth served by the child welfare system. Since 2018, the department has conducted a series of statewide engagement activities to obtain input from department regional and community-based care staff and other community partners to inform decision-making for policy and practice changes, educate stakeholders, and increase awareness of FFPSA provisions. The department also convened a statewide workgroup to analyze FFPSA requirements and submit recommendations to the department. The department continues to work in collaboration with child welfare stakeholders to develop policies and draft the title IV-E prevention plan. Activities still in progress include finalizing policies to support the title IV-E prevention programming and licensing of child-caring agencies as specified FFPSA setting types, and developing local community title IV-E prevention plans that will feed into the state level prevention plan.

Other Reports
The Auditor General reports on department operations are available on its website.

Websites of Interest
Florida Institute for Child Welfare
Florida's Center for Child Welfare
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
American Public Human Services Association
Center for Law and Social Policy
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
National Center for Children in Poverty
Chronical of Social Change

Performance Information
Performance measures and standards for the department may be found in its Long Range Program Plan and Planning and Performance Measures, which reports the department's performance on external and internal measures for its various programs. The measures allow the user to view performance at both a statewide and geographic region level.

Section 20.19, Florida Statutes.

Department of Children and Families

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