Get to Know a TACFS Partner: Building Bridges Initiative

Meet Lloyd Bullard, Senior Consultant at National Building Bridges Initiatives (BBI). BBI and TACFS have a shared passion for prevention and intervention programs that center youth and families in the work to keep families together.

Lloyd’s journey as a child welfare professional started many years ago as a youth care worker in Connecticut. Through an expansive career, he has developed expertise in many areas.  Lloyd has over 35 years of experience working within child welfare, behavioral health, juvenile justice, immigration, and education. He serves as the CEO for and sole proprietor of LBIC Consulting Services, Inc. and CEO for the Global Center of Creative Learning, LLC.  Lloyd spent over 10 years working for the Child Welfare League of America where he held the positions of Director of Residential Care, Director of the National Center to Eliminate the Use of Restraints & Seclusion, Director of Cultural Competence and Racial Disproportionality, and Senior Consultant.   

Lloyd brought his expertise and commitment to resilient youth and families to his work with the BBI as a fledgling organization. Through this lens, Lloyd has contributed to the growth of BBI’s cultural responsiveness work for more than ten years.

BBI is a national initiative working to identify and promote best practices and policy that will create strong and closely coordinated partnerships and collaborations between families, youth, advocates, community and residential service providers, and oversight agencies. The overall goal of BBI is that families and youth who receive a residential intervention will realize sustained positive outcomes post-residential discharge, including outcomes such as decreased readmissions to congregate care, improved family relationships and home stability, and successfully living in the community. 

As a Senior Consultant for BBI, Lloyd is responsible for leading and coordinating the efforts of the BBI Leaders of Color Project, BBI’s work related to Culture and Linguistic Competence (CLC) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and working with state leaders to transform residential intervention. Additional projects have aligned with BBI’s core principles including improving family engagement, youth guided care, trauma responsiveness, and residential intervention sustained positive outcomes post-discharge.  


Informed by its national perspective on the child welfare system, BBI crafts opportunities for all stakeholders in a youth and family’s life to collaborate and share best practices, thereby enriching prevention and intervention services for vulnerable families and youth across the country.  

BBI forecasts that in the next two to five years, more states and programs will integrate a CLC/DEI model into program operations. They also predict federal funding increases to support Prevention and Early Intervention Programs. 

“Through sustained outcomes, we will see recidivism rates reduced- to not see young people re-admitted. A youth’s behavior and investment improve when they have a say in what happens to them… Youth voice and choice and family engagement are key to improved outcomes. We think this approach will encourage providers to transition from control programming to one that is collaborative, family-driven and youth-guided.” 

 Lloyd Bullard, BBI Senior Consultant 

All community organizations are called to involvement by signing the BBI Resolution www.buildingbridges4youth.org/partners on their website. To get in touch with National BBI’s efforts at large, contact Mark Nickell at marknickell.bbi@gmail.com. To learn more about BBI’s Leaders of Color Project contact Lloyd directly at bbi.lbullard@gmail.com.  To learn more about BBI activities in Texas, please contact Andrea Requenes, TACFS Statewide Training Coordinator: arequenes@tacfs.org.