Last week, Children's Trust Executive Director, Jennifer Valenzuela, was invited to testify before the Joint Committee on Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities. She shared our strategic vision, the importance of collaboration, and emphasized that prevention is possible.
You can read the full testimony below or watch a video of her remarks here (beginning at the 2:52 mark)
Jennifer Valenzuela, Children's Trust Executive Director
Testimony shared on Tuesday, April 15.
Good afternoon Chair Livingstone, Chair Kennedy, and members of the legislature. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. It is an honor to share the Children’s Trust’s strategic vision to prevent child abuse and neglect in Massachusetts. My name is Jennifer Valenzuela and I’m the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Children’s Trust. I’m also a public health clinical social worker who still works in a pediatric emergency department once a month. So I come to this role with both a systems lens and an up-close understanding of what families are experiencing on the ground.
Before I begin describing the Children’s Trust let me first tell you about a mom I worked with for years. She had two young children. Her oldest had significant medical needs—he was blind and non-verbal, and required multiple specialty appointments just to stay healthy and safe. Her second child was still a toddler when their father—her partner—was murdered.
After his death, she fell into a deep depression. She was grieving, alone, and trying to raise two children under five in deep poverty. She had very little family support, and the weight of everything was crushing her.
I was her clinician. And I filed reports to DCF for medical neglect—because she couldn’t consistently get her son to his appointments. And yet, I knew how deeply she loved her children. Fiercely. More than anyone else could ever love them. She was not a danger to her kids—she was a mom who needed help.
Years later, I still ask myself: What could I have done differently? Could I have supported her more directly? Could I have received better training as a clinician—training that helped me recognize what trauma, grief, and poverty can do to a parent’s capacity?
That mom—and so many others like her—deserved a system that saw her strengths, not just her struggles. A system built for prevention, not just reaction. That’s exactly what brought me to the Children’s Trust—and what has me excited every day about the work we’re doing to build something better for families across Massachusetts.
The Children’s Trust is the state’s only agency dedicated solely to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. We are a public-private organization, and our vision is bold: we believe every child in Massachusetts can grow up in a thriving community and family. We believe that is possible.
To achieve this vision, we first need to challenge the pervasive belief that abuse and neglect are inevitable. They are not. Prevention is possible—and we know what it takes: stable relationships, economic security, access to support, and communities that wrap around families instead of isolating them.
The Children’s Trust partners with community-based organizations, state agencies, and philanthropy—to strengthen and invest in the systems that support families. We focus on prevention. That means getting upstream of the crisis. And it means believing that families are not problems to be fixed—they are our partners in building safe and nurturing homes.
We are best known for overseeing Healthy Families Massachusetts, the state’s home visiting program for first-time parents under age 24. It’s an evidence-based, nationally accredited program that helps young parents build strong relationships with their babies and set their families on a healthy path. This year, over 2,500 families were enrolled in Healthy Families.
And the outcomes speak for themselves. We’ve seen reduced second reports of abuse and neglect, less homelessness, stronger co-parenting relationships, improved maternal mental health, and increased educational and employment outcomes for parents. In fact, for every $1 the state invests in Healthy Families, the Commonwealth sees a $3.11 return in reduced health and child welfare costs. This isn’t just a nice program, it’s a financially sound investment for the Commonwealth.
But Healthy Families is just one part of our broader strategy. Our work in home visiting is a powerful example of what’s possible when programs are supported by aligned systems. To deepen and sustain this impact, we’re collaborating across state agencies to ensure families experience consistent, high-quality support no matter where they enter the system.
Our strategic plan is shifting the Children’s Trust from program-level work to systems-level transformation. How are we doing that? We have defined five programmatic priorities:
The first priority is aligning systems that support families. The Children’s Trust is actively working across agencies to build a more coordinated, family-centered ecosystem in Massachusetts. This includes our partnership with the Department of Public Health to align home visiting programs statewide, and our joint efforts with MassHealth and DPH to ensure the successful implementation of community-based doula services. We’re advancing cross-agency fatherhood work to strengthen the role of fathers in prevention, and collaborating with the Department of Early Education and Care and the Department of Children and Families to shape the future of the Family Center model. Together, these efforts reflect our belief that preventing child abuse and neglect requires more than strong programs—it requires connected systems that place families at the center.
We also are building a Training Institute based on decades of experience training the home visiting workforce and other family support workers. Our trainings are consistently held up as a model for what a strengths-based, trauma-informed, and family centered training can look like. Last year alone our training team equipped over 5,000 family support workers with helpful tools and knowledge to better serve families. We have a vision that one day, all family support workers, including our state employees have a common approach to families.
Our third priority is the Fatherhood Initiative. We continue growing our initiative to center fathers—recognizing the powerful role they play in children’s lives and correcting the long-standing bias that too often leaves dads out of the equation. One of our partnerships is with the Hampshire County House of Corrections which began 10 years ago with the Nurturing Fathers program. When fathers are serving time, they can join a 12-week group which teaches fathers how to build parenting skills and strengthen bonds with their children. So when their jail time is up, they can be the father they dream to be.
Our fourth priority is the statewide effort we are doing in partnership with the Office of Child Advocate to prevent child sexual abuse. We are working with schools, municipal parks & rec departments, and other youth-serving organizations to create environments that protect children and promote healthy boundaries. Our next phase of this work is going a level deeper to reach parents and caregivers, especially those in underserved communities, to make sure they have access to clear, culturally responsive prevention tools.
The fifth priority of our strategic plan is working to transform how the broader ecosystem—government agencies, mandated reporters, educators, and medical professionals—responds to families. In Massachusetts, too many families are reported to DCF for issues that are really about poverty or lack of support, not abuse or neglect. In Fiscal Year 2024, nearly 93,000 51a reports were filed. And over ½ of those reports were screened out. Rather than defaulting to reports, we’re advancing a mindset of supporting—encouraging professionals to ask, “What does this family need?” instead of only, “Do I need to file a report?” We started this conversation last week, co-hosted by our esteemed chairs Livingstone and Kennedy with some of you and our state partners including – Commissioner Miller from DCF, Secretary Tutwiler from EOE, Commissioner Reardon from DYS, Commissioner Goldstein from DPH, Commissioner McCue from DTA, Director Mossaides from OCA and many more. It’s clear we all want what’s best for Massachusetts families.
Despite the progress, there are still major barriers. One of the biggest? Supporting the workforce. Our Healthy Families home visitors—the people doing the vital work of helping young parents raise their children safely—start at just $18 an hour. That’s one of the lowest starting salaries for this role in the New England region.
We’re asking for a modest increase to raise the salary floor to $20 an hour. Because when a home visitor leaves, 70% of their families leave the program too. These are trust-based relationships, and turnover erodes impact. We have the data, we have the outcomes, and we need to invest in the people who make them possible.
We’re asking for continued funding, because prevention doesn’t just save lives—it saves money. We’re asking for partnership, because we can’t do this alone. And we’re asking for an openness to learn together—about what works, what needs to change, and how we can build a system that sees families as partners, not problems.
The Children’s Trust is not just a funder. We are a statewide convener, a connector, and a catalyst for change. We are moving toward a future where child abuse and neglect are not just responded to, but prevented. And with your support, we can get there.
To truly understand what this looks like in practice, let’s go back to that mom. Let’s imagine how things might have been different if the supports we’re building today had been in place for her then. What if a home visitor from Healthy Families had been in her life from the beginning—someone who could meet her in her home, build trust, and walk with her through those impossible moments?
What if I had been trained through our Training Institute—equipped not just to identify risk, but to see strengths, and to support her in a way that preserved her dignity and met her needs?
What if fatherhood programs had reached her partner before he was killed—offering connection, support, and perhaps a different path forward?
What if our systems were aligned—so that medical care, mental health services, parenting support, and grief counseling didn’t live in separate silos that overwhelmed her, but came together in one coordinated net of support?
And what if, instead of being a mandated reporter, I had been part of a culture that embraced supporting first—where the first question we ask is not “Do I need to file a report?” but “What does this family need?”
Her story is not unusual. But it is unacceptable. And it’s why we’re doing this work. To shift the system from reactive to proactive. From fragmented to aligned. From punitive to supportive.
In closing, our vision is not just a roadmap for the children’s Trust, it is a call to action for each and every one of us. It invites all of us to reimagine what prevention can look like in Massachusetts. We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with you and we look forward to continuing our shared work to ensure every family in Massachusetts has access to support.
Thank you for your leadership, your partnership, and your commitment to the wellbeing of children and families across the Commonwealth.
Watch a video the remarks here (beginning at the 2:52 mark)
Alicia Curran
407-797-2076
