Is Our Definition of Prevention Right for What Families Need With Zach Laris

Prevention is one of the most common words in child welfare and family well-being conversations. But what are we actually trying to prevent?

Are we trying to prevent foster care entry, family crisis, poverty, surveillance, or are we trying to build the conditions families need to thrive?

In this episode of Community In-Site, host Valerie Frost speaks with Zach Laris, founder of Bolder Horizons and author of Child Welfare Wonk, about the Family First Prevention Services Act, federal financing, evidence standards, implementation, and the limits of the current prevention frame.

Family First was meant to help move child welfare upstream by allowing federal dollars to be used for prevention services. But early data raises bigger questions about what prevention is designed to do, what states are incentivized to build, and whether a child welfare financing policy can carry the weight of a much larger family well-being vision.

Together, Valerie and Zach explore whether Family First has exposed an implementation problem, a policy design problem, or something deeper: a vision problem.

This conversation sits in the tension between policy possibility and family reality. Policy can create flexibility on paper, but families experience systems through implementation, trust, culture, and whether help feels safe enough to use.

So the question is not only whether Family First is working. It is whether prevention is big enough for the family well-being vision we keep placing on it.