A component of the Texas Model for Addressing Disproportionality and Disparities, the Texas Community Engagement Model is a four-stage process that helped to reduce disproportionality in child welfare and ensure equity in child welfare services.
Stage One: Community awareness and engagement
Stage one involves three separate but related processes: sharing data to raise awareness, allowing constituents to participate, and engaging community leaders.
Stage Two: Community Leadership
Stage two involves building and sharing leadership in communities. This includes community advisory committees that partner with systems and organizations.
Stage Three: Community Organization
Community and systems leaders guide efforts to improve the work. Community members in this process have a legitimate role and contribute to the process of choosing and analyzing strategies for making sustainable change.
Stage Four: Community Accountability
Everyone involved is accountable. Community and systems leaders are fully committed to identifying, developing, and achieving measurable outcomes.
Also, the community engagement that begin with the child welfare system can be leveraged to make improvements in other systems. The Community Engagement Model helps engage and empower affected communities in innovative ways to support individual and community efforts.
Regional disproportionality and disparities advisory committees provide a foundation for work that can affect multiple systems statewide.