Sac Family Connect website launches to centralize home‑visiting referrals in Sacramento County

First 5 Sacramento and the regional home‑visiting collaborative demonstrated Sac Family Connect, a new website to centralize information about home visiting and related family support services, at the commission's April 7 meeting.

Alejandra Librato presented the site as the product of a collaborative that began after First 5 California funding in 2020 established a regional home‑visiting coordinating collaborative. The site is intended to reduce silos among funders and providers, help providers make more informed referrals and give parents an easy way to learn about programs and request a warm handoff. Librato said providers and community partners were engaged in the site’s branding, design and content.

Key features: • Filtered resources form: users enter minimal information (no name, DOB or income required) and receive a prioritized list of programs for which they are eligible. For families meeting specific criteria (for example, pregnancy or an infant in the household), priority resources such as the Be Mama Aware maternal mental‑health resource will be shown prominently. • Consent-based warm handoff: users can elect to “connect me” and consent to share the submitted contact information with a chosen program; the receiving agency gets an email with the information and is asked to follow up. • Provider tools: a provider’s tab includes a decision tree to guide referrals, short animated onboarding videos for staff, and a place to post training opportunities. The decision tree and supporting materials are intended for provider use, not distributed directly to families. • Data and outreach: a targeted three‑month outreach campaign (English and Spanish) will focus on ZIP codes with higher Latino populations and other priority neighborhoods; staff will track analytics and cross‑agency referrals.

Librato said Sac Family Connect does not replace 2‑1‑1; rather it provides a focused, filtered set of family‑support and home‑visiting resources (typically five to 12 recommendations) and aims to reduce inappropriate or duplicative referrals. The site also includes a section for parents to share stories and will be used to collect community input during strategic‑planning processes.

The commission’s discussion noted the site’s potential to reduce wait lists by routing families to non‑First 5 funded programs when appropriate, and commissioners suggested outreach to hospitals and other referral sources to distribute QR codes and raise awareness. Librato said the collaborative will continue refining the site based on user feedback and analytics.