Family First Impact

Family First isn’t just a program. It’s a movement to support children and families before they reach a crisis point. This page highlights the measurable progress being made through Family First implementation and evaluation in Kansas. 

Whether you're a policymaker, provider, researcher, or community advocate, this is your hub for understanding the outcomes, stories, and insights that demonstrate real impact. 

Key findings to date: 

• 90% of children completing Kansas Family First services remained safely at home one year after referral to the service. ^[1]
• Caregivers completing Kansas Family First services reported statistically significantly improved child social-emotional well-being, and significant improvements in their own mental health (i.e. depression, anxiety, and stress), sense of competence as a parent, and substance use.^[1]
• Provision of free legal services can prevent children in kinship families from entering foster care by enhancing access to the services needed to ensure youth have legal membership in families that maintain their cultural and community ties.^[2]
• Using intentional and equitable models to engage individuals with lived experience as system change leaders can result in large-scale system change aligned with family and community priorities.^[3]

1. Byers, K., Barton, J., Cizek, M., Vanchy Kadavasal, P., Tasnim, N., Diaz, A., Brown, A. R., & Olaleye, O. (2025). Family First: Early success and future directions [Policy brief]. University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research ↑
2. Brown, A. R., Byers, K., Vanchy Kadavasal, P., Alford, D., Diaz, A. L., Akin, B. A., & Cizek, M. (2024). Preventive legal services for kinship care: Reducing the need for foster care with Family First. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 105(1), 37–56.   ↑
3. Pogany, G., Badas, D., Byers, K., Cizek, M., Kadavasal, P. V., Nothnagel Hart, M., Erwin, K., Petrovic, V., Soto, D., & Barton, J. (2025). Centering families through shared power: Core components of lived expert engagement for system change impact. Child Welfare, 103(4), 189–210. ↑