MODULE 1: Organizational Foundations for Successful Family Engagement and Partnership
Overview:
- To become a family-driven organization, residential leaders commit to and fully articulate a vision and goal for permanency and long-term success for each family. This includes crafting a family-driven strategic plan with specific action steps for successfully engaging, supporting, partnering with, and building skills for families from first contact with the program through aftercare. Additionally, to succeed with family engagement, organizations commit to becoming culturally and linguistically competent and continue to strive for a full understanding of equity, diversity, and inclusion issues in the communities served.
- Successful organizations invite family members to the table as fully engaged and valued partners. Hiring Family/Parent Partners who represent the cultures and ethnicities of the families served, and speak their languages, is critical for promoting family voice and choice throughout the organization. Workforce training, coaching, and supervision regarding family engagement is also crucial to organizational transformation.
- When the goal of a residential intervention is permanency and long-term post-residential success for the youth and family1, services are ideally focused on strengthening families by providing clinical and support services in the home and community throughout the residential intervention (pre-, during, and post-). This can ensure that skills developed throughout the residential intervention align with the skills needed for youth and families to succeed together at home.
[1]Youth is used throughout the modules to refer to both children and adolescents.
Module 1 Organizational Foundations for Successful Family Engagement and Partnership Resources
Best Practices for Residential Interventions for Youth and their Families: A Resource Guide for Judges and Legal Partners with Involvement in the Children’s Dependency Court System. (February, 2017). Building Bridges Initiative and Association of Children’s Residential Centers.
Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Case Study: Leading Innovation Outside the Comfort Zone: The Seneca Family of Agencies Journey. (2017). Building Bridges Initiative.
Building Bridges Self-Assessment Tool [Also Available in Spanish]. (2020, September). Building Bridges Initiative.
Caldwell, B., Beck, S., Damon, J., Hust, J., Nyreen, J., & Montes, R. (2014). Initial steps in the culture change process. In G.M. Blau, B. Caldwell, & R.E. Lieberman (Eds.), Residential interventions for children, adolescents, and families: A best practice guide. (pp. 154–169). Routledge.
Hust, J.A. & Kuppinger, A. (2014). Moving toward family-driven care in residential. In G. Blau, B. Caldwell, & R.E. Lieberman (Eds.), Residential interventions for children, adolescents, and families: A best practice guide (pp. 15–33). Routledge.
Kuppinger, A., Hust, J.A., Hunt, P., Mosby, P., Hammack, S., & Caldwell, B. (2020). Putting families first: Strategies to transform and advance family engagement and partnership. In B. Caldwell, R.E. Lieberman, J. Lebel, & G.M. Blau (Eds.), Transforming Residential Interventions: Practical Strategies and Future Directions (pp. 8–30). Routledge.
LeBel, J., Holden, M.J., Fauntleroy, D.A., Galyean, L., Martin, W.R., & Casciano-McCann, C. (2020). Residential transformation: Successful strategies and examples. In B. Caldwell, R. Lieberman, J. LeBel, & G.M. Blau (Eds.), Transforming Residential Interventions: Practical Strategies and Future Directions (pp. 75–93). Routledge.
Lieberman, R.E., LeBel, J., Caldwell, B., Hust, J.A., Collins, J., & Blau, G.M. (2020). Transforming residential interventions: A practice framework. In B. Caldwell, R. Lieberman, J. LeBel, & G.M. Blau (Eds.), Transforming Residential Interventions: Practical Strategies and Future Directions (pp. 1–7). Routledge.
Sexton, T.L., Rios, G.O., Johnson, K.A., & Plante, B.R. (2014). Clinical strategies for engaging families. In G. Blau, B. Caldwell, & R.E. Lieberman (Eds.), Residential interventions for children, adolescents, and families: A best practice guide (pp. 34-45). Routledge.
Key Concepts & Definitions
Permanency for youth means “having an enduring family relationship that is safe and meant to last a lifetime.”
Cultural competence is “a process of learning that leads to an ability to effectively respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by the presence of culture diversity in a defined social system.”
Committing to equity means providing “fair access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups.”
Diversity “includes all the ways in which people differ, encompassing the different characteristics that make one individual or group different from another (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, socioeconomic status, marital status, language, physical appearance, etc.).”
Inclusion is “authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.”
A Family/Parent Partner is a parent with lived experience raising a child receiving mental- or behavioral-health, child-welfare, or juvenile-justice services. The Family/Parent Partner provides intentional peer support to the parent or primary caregiver of the child through strategic self-disclosure related to their own family experience. Family/Parent Partners provide non-adversarial advocacy and suspend bias and blame in all interactions with parents and professionals. They encourage parents to practice self-care and build on their strengths. Family/Parent Partners provide hope, build connections and linkages, and encourage parents to utilize their voice to be part of joint problem solving. Family/Parent Partners also participate in program and system development through their membership on planning and policy-making bodies at various levels. They may also be referred to as family partners or advocates, family peer support specialists, peer advocates, etc. BBI recommends that residential programs hire multiple (more than one) Family/Parent Partners. Some residential programs have partnered with local family-run organizations (FRO) or family support groups to provide Family/Parent Partners for their own programs.
A Child and Family Team is a collaborative team of residential and community providers, family members, the youth, Family/Parent Partners, Youth Partners/Peer Mentors, and natural supports (e.g., people the family chooses to involve on the team, such as a family friend, coach, teacher, religious leader, etc.). This team meets regularly to define goals, discuss progress, and refine the service and support plan to best meet the needs of the child and family. Different child and family systems use different terms for this group; for instance, child welfare providers might use the term family team conferencing.