Partnerships for Success

Melissa Ross, Director
Partnerships for Success Academy

Building capacity to identify and prioritize critical community issues and manage the investment of resources to achieve outcomes for children, youth and families.

Initiative Overview

Partnerships for Success (PfS) is a service of Ohio Family and Children First (OFCF). PfS exists to support and strengthen local Family and Children (FCF) Councils and their efforts to improve family and child well-being outcomes most important to their counties. FCF Councils participating in PfS:

  • Mobilize communities around issues related to families and children and engage them in action;
  • Reduce the duplication of effort between and among state and local agencies;
  • Make better decisions that lead to better investments of public dollars;
  • Evaluate the impact of these investments with a focus on accountability; and
  • Provide for long-term sustainability of effective programs and services.

PfS is a community-based process designed to build capacity to plan, implement and ultimately make decisions about investments in child and family serving interventions. The PfS process focuses on the management of community efforts to address significant local issues and includes a series of tools and procedures that community members can use to facilitate their collaborative efforts to address a variety of concerns related to community well-being. These tools and procedures are based on the most current community development theories and experiences of practitioners across the country.

The state’s investment in the PfS process leveraged $17,280,000 in external funding to address the needs identified in the PfS county plans. For every dollar invested in PfS by the state, there was an $11.52 return. (2005-2006 PfS Progress Report, Executive Summary) A significant proportion of leveraged funds are being used to support the implementation of evidence-based strategies designed to impact locally defined child, youth and family well-being outcomes. PfS is administered by the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS).

Downloadable Support Documents

Sponsor: Ohio Department of Youth Services