About SafeCare

SafeCare® is a evidence-based parenting program for families with children 0 to 5. Our mission is that all parents can provide a nurturing, safe, and healthy home environment.

We focus on three key factors that are universally important for all families: improving the relationship between parents and their children and keeping homes safe and children healthy.

Over 30 years of scientific research and 60 studies support SafeCare’s  effectiveness at improving positive parenting skills and at reducing and preventing abuse and neglect. Our home within the Mark Chaffin Center for Healthy Development supports our commitment to understand how to improve the lives of all children, everywhere. To read more about our research, click here.

The National SafeCare Training and Research Center (NSTRC) provides training and support for systems and agencies around the world to adopt SafeCare and deliver it to families. Our Center was established in 2007 with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation at Georgia State University.

NSTRC is cultivating collaborations with communities, child welfare administrators, and policy makers to increase support and resources for evidence-based practice and for the prevention of maltreatment at a local, national, and international scale.

 

A word from our Founder and Model Developer Dr. John Lutzker:  “When I was 18, during the summer following my freshman year of college, I took an introductory psychology course and visited an innovative behavioral program at a V.A. Hospital. From that moment I knew that  wanted to devote myself to a structured approach to behavior change. In my senior year I worked with children at a state hospital and that made me realize that I wanted to help parents keep their children out of such placements. After receiving my doctorate in developmental and child psychology and having some successes and a few failures with structured behavioral parenting programs at the time, I realized that for problems related to the complexities faced by parents in high-risk situations, programs should address skill deficits related to known predictors of child maltreatment risk. Then, a series of events such as being in the right place at the right time, great colleagues and staff, and highly motivated and brilliant students paved the way for  developing and fine tuning evidence-based programs that led to SafeCare®.”