Moving Beyond Family Support:
Empowering Families
NTAC Topical Conference
Tampa, Florida
April 28, 2004
This project is supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special
Education Programs (OSEP). Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.
The National Technical Assistance Consortium for Children and Young Adults Who Are Deaf-Blind
OVERVIEW
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Explain difference between support and
empowerment
Explain the various roles of Family Support
Personnel
Increase understanding of an empowerment
approach to family support
Share strategies and examples for enabling
and empowering families
Discussion and activity to illustrate and
check for understanding
DEFINITIONS
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Support – to bear the weight of , especially from
below; to hold in position; prevent from falling,
sinking or slipping; to keep (one’s spirits, for
example) from falling during stress; lend strength to;
to provide for or maintain by supplying with money
or other necessities
Empower – to invest with legal power, authorize; to
enable or permit
Enable – to supply with the means, knowledge, or
opportunity to be or do something; to make feasible
or possible; to give legal power, capacity or
sanction; to permit
WHAT DOES EMPOWERMENT MEAN?
“ . . . empowerment has no agreed-upon definition
. . . Rather, the term has been used, often
loosely, to capture a family of somewhat related
meanings” (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990)
“Empowerment is a little bit like obscenity; you
have trouble defining it, but you know it when
you see it” (Rappaport, 1985)
WHAT DOES EMPOWERMENT MEAN?
Definitions emphasize:
 Mastery
and control as outcomes
 Processes and experiences that create or produce
empowerment
 Intra-personal and inter-personal behaviors that
moderate and mediate mastery and control
 An interactional relationship between the processes
and the outcomes of empowering experiences
 That empowerment efforts are guided by a certain set
of ideological beliefs
WHY EMPOWERMENT?
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Parents are the experts on their children and
need to know/believe this and acquire skills
to let others know
Support only takes you so far
Don’t want to build dependency on
professionals
Affirming experience for families
It’s what families need to be able to make it
through the times/challenges ahead
EMPOWERMENT PHILOSOPHY
The Guiding Principles of an empowering
philosophy are:
1. All people have existing strengths and capabilities
as well as the capacity to become more competent.
2. The failure of a person to display competence is
not due to deficits within a person, but rather to the failure
of social systems to provide or create opportunities for
competencies to be displayed or acquired.
3. In situations where existing capabilities need
to be strengthened or new competencies need to be
learned, they are best learned through experiences
that lead people to make self-attributions about their
capabilities to influence important life events.
Now that we’ve talked about
what empowerment is….
How do we achieve it?
FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES
Teacher/Therapist
 Find
ways to incorporate instruction/therapy
into normal activities and daily routines
 Identify child and parents’ strengths and use
them to address identified needs
Empathetic Listener
 Utilize
both active and reflective listening skills
 Promote family/support personnel partnerships
FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES
Consultant
 Provide
information and opinions in response
to the family’s request(s)
 Provide knowledge and experiences so that family’s
network of support can be better informed and able
to support the family
Resource
 Act
as a “natural clearinghouse” of information
regarding community resources
 Assure that family support personnel are
knowledgeable about local/state/national resources
and know how to assist families in accessing
appropriate resources
FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES
Enabler
 Create
opportunities for the family to become skilled
at obtaining resources and support
 Family support personnel need to act in the role of
“empowerer” not “rescuer”
Mobilizer
 Help
families connect with others (families and/or
individuals) that can provide new or alternative
supports and resources
 Using a “MAPPING” strategy can help bring key
players together
FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES
Mediator
 Promote
cooperation and instill an atmosphere of
collaboration
 Time-limited, with the purpose of setting up positive,
task-oriented and mutually reinforcing interactions
between families and large systems if negative
experiences have occurred
Advocate
 Provide
families with knowledge and skills necessary
to protect parent and child rights, negotiate effectively
with policymakers, and create opportunities to
influence the establishment of policies on behalf of
children and families
 Important to act in a proactive way
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR
EMPOWERING FAMILIES
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Promote positive and proactive interactions with
families
Offer help in response to family-identified needs
Offer help that is normative
Offer suggestions that provide the family with
immediate success in mobilizing resources
Promote the use of the family’s natural support
networks as principal ways of meeting needs
Adapted from: “Guidelines for Family Empowerment” in Enabling and Empowering Families: Principles & Guidelines
for Practice (1988) Dunst, Carl; Trivette, Carol and Deal, Angela; Brookline Books, Cambridge, MA; p 94-97.
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR
EMPOWERING FAMILIES
6.
7.
8.
9.
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Promote a sense of cooperation and joint
responsibility for meeting family needs
Permit the family to decide to accept or reject help
Permit help to be reciprocated and offer
opportunities to do so
Promote independence and the acquisition of
skills and behaviors necessary to meet family
needs
Promote the family members’ ability to see
themselves as an active agent responsible for
behavior change
Adapted from: “Guidelines for Family Empowerment” in Enabling and Empowering Families: Principles & Guidelines
for Practice (1988) Dunst, Carl; Trivette, Carol and Deal, Angela; Brookline Books, Cambridge, MA; p 94-97.
PROMOTE POSITVE AND PROACTIVE
INTERACTIONS WITH FAMILIES
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Taking a proactive stance holds the assertion
that people are already competent or have the
capacity to become competent
Develops a trusting relationship with families
Process of empowerment can begin right away
in our work with families
Initiates an attitude that will go far
OFFER HELP IN RESPONSE TO
FAMILY- IDENTIFIED NEEDS
Often a difficult one for us
 IFSP is a “family-driven” document
 Families of infants and toddlers may be at
a different place than services providers
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OFFER HELP THAT IS NORMATIVE
Stays in line with the family’s appraisal of
the situation
 Benefits exceed the efforts/cost to solve
the problem/need
 Culturally sensitive
 Builds on inherent strengths
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OFFER SUGGESTIONS THAT PROVIDE
THE FAMILY WITH IMMEDIATE SUCCESS
IN MOBILIZING RESOURCES
Assists in fostering positive partnerships
 Begin with an immediate need
 Demonstrate success
 Take small steps
 Build on positive experiences
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PROMOTE THE USE OF THE FAMILY’S
NATURAL SUPPORT NETWORKS AS
PRINCIPAL WAYS OF MEETING NEEDS
Uses what the family is comfortable with
 Family assessment is part of IFSP
 May need to train staff in family
assessment and/or family systems theory
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PROMOTE A SENSE OF COOPERATION
AND JOINT RESPONSIBILITY FOR
MEETING FAMILY NEEDS
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Multi-disciplinary approach is a major
component of early intervention services
Parents are seen as equal partners and
recognized as knowing their child best
Training for family empowerment can and should
begin early
Emphasis of team concept provides a model for
family members to utilize throughout educational
and life planning
Helps assure that service providers are viewed
as partners, rather than someone sent to “do”
and “fix” everything
PERMIT THE FAMILY TO DECIDE TO
ACCEPT OR REJECT HELP
Instills family-driven concept
 Gives family feeling that they do have
some control in their life
 Ultimately families do know what is best
for their child/family
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PERMIT HELP TO BE RECIPROCATED
AND OFFER OPPORTUNITIES TO DO SO
Allows families to show their gratitude
 Provides chance to do something positive
for others
 Reinforces capabilities as parents of a
child with special needs
 Beneficial to DB project and other families
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PROMOTE INDEPENDENCE AND THE
ACQUISITION OF SKILLS AND BEHAVIORS
NECESSARY TO MEET FAMILY NEEDS
Enabling experiences are opportunities
(naturally occurring or created) that allow
for competence to be displayed or learned
 A slow, but necessary process
 Will only lead to strong, more cable
families – empowered
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PROMOTE THE FAMILY MEMBERS’ ABILITY TO
SEE THEMSELVES AS AN ACTIVE AGENTS
RESPONSIBLE F0R BEHAVIOR CHANGE
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Reinforces partnership/team concept
Provide opportunities for training for empowerment
(e.g. advance preparation, de-briefing, thanking parents)
Supports and encourages empowerment as locus of
control shifts from service provider to family member
Reinforces family attitudes of adequacy and confidence
in their own abilities to effect positive change for their
child
A person is empowered when he or she has attributed
changes in behavior to his or her own actions, in order to
acquire the sense of control necessary to manage family
affairs
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Enabling and Empowering Families: Principals
and Guidelines for Practice (1988) by Carl
Dunst, PhD., Carol Trivette, MA, and Angela
Deal, MSW
Supporting and Strengthening Families:
Methods, Strategies and Practices (1994) by
Carl J. Dunst, Carol M. Trivette, and Angela G.
Deal
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Linking Family Support and Early Childhood Programs/Issues, Experiences,
Opportunities by Mary Larner, PhD.
Families, Professionals, and Exceptionality: Collaborating for
Empowerment by Ann Turnbull and H. Rutherford Turnbull
California Association of Family Empowerment Centers – www.cafec.org
Family Empowerment – www.familyempowerment.org
The Florida Partnership for Parent Involvement –
http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/dares/fcpi/statement.html
Parents Helping Parents – www.php.com
National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice –
www.uiowa.edu/~nrcfcp/index.html
SUMMING IT ALL UP!
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IFSP requirements guarantee that we look at
things from a family perspective first – this is
a shift from what some service providers may
have been taught (or what some may believe)
Building dependent relationships is harmful to
families in the long run, regardless of our good
intentions
TA providers aren’t usually the ones who have
ongoing contact with families and/or know them
best – we need to establish positive collaborative
relationships with the entities that do
REMEMBER!
It is not simply a matter of
whether family needs are met,
but the manner in which needs
are met that results in
family empowerment.
THE END!