The
Family Support
Model
Strengthening and Empowering
Families for a Healthy
Development
“Provision of Services”
Approach
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Assess what a “recipient” needs.
Determine the eligibility.
Make arrangements for the person to receive
some of the services their agency offers.
Make referrals to other appropriate services.
Provide incentives or pressures to get the
recipient to follow through until services are
not longer needed.
Some Faulty Assumptions
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The family is telling us all the relevant
information regarding their situation.
We know what’s best for them.
They will follow up on whatever
treatment plan we create for them.
When they don’t, they are “noncompliant,” and as a result, services
should be taken away.
Four Concepts of
Family Support
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A set of beliefs and an approach
A type of grassroots, community-based
program
A shift in human services delivery
A movement for social change
Empowerment Means…
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A dynamic process through which families
reach their own goals. No one can
“empower” someone else. Empowering
families means helping families reclaim their
ability to dream, and to restore their own
capacity to take good care of themselves.
This also means helping communities, states,
and nations to create the conditions through
which families can reach their own goals,
which may mean changing human service
systems.
Family Support vs. Current System
Family Attitude
“I am responsible
for my family’s
future”
“The system owes
me”
Family-Worker
Relationship
Partnership, families Professionals decide
set own goals
what families need
Worker Philosophy
What is strong with What is wrong and
this family, and how how can we make
can we build on it
them fix it
Worker Focus
Supporting ongoing Focus on crisis
healthy family
development
Power Dynamic
Power with
Power over
Worker & Diversity
Diversity is valued
People should fit in
Features of FDC training
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110 hours of interagency training
Classes offered by community-based trainers
Supportive, interactive
One-on-one mentoring by field advisor
Portfolio to document learning
Final exam and credential
Goals of the FDC
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Families will develop their own capacity
to solve problems and achieve longlasting self-reliance and
interdependence with their communities
Goals, cont.
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Frontline workers will develop skills needed to
work effectively with families.
Agencies and communities will transform the
way they work with families, focusing on
strengths, families setting their own goals,
and fostering collaboration.
Process of Change
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Family develops a partnership with the family
development worker.
Worker helps the family to asses its needs
and strengths in an ongoing process.
Family sets its own major goal and smaller
goals that work toward the major goal and
brainstorms ideas for reaching goals.
Process of Change, cont
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Worker helps family make a written plan, with
some tasks assigned to the family and some
to the worker. The plan is continually
updated and successes are celebrated!
Family learns and practices skills needed to
become self-reliant.
Process of Change, cont
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Family uses services as stepping stones to
reach their goals.
The family’s sense of responsible self-control
is restored. The family is strengthened by
the development process so they are better
able to handle future challenges.
Outcome Research
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June 1998 to May 2000, Cornell University
investigated the NY State FDC
Evaluated impact on families, family support
workers, agencies, and their communities.
Data were collected through focus groups of
family members and interviews with frontline
workers and their supervisors, FDC
facilitators, field advisors, advisory council
members, and state policymakers.
Outcomes for Families
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Family members recognized their strengths,
set their own goals and developed plans to
reach those goals;
Families increased their involvement in
agencies, school and community
organizations and participated in ways that
reflect self-empowerment.
Outcomes for Workers
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Workers reported increased self-esteem, confidence,
and assertiveness in helping
families as well as in setting goals for higher
education and their careers;
Workers related improved communication and
relationship skills in professional lives with families
and co-workers, as well as in their personal lives;
Workers expressed increased knowledge and use of
empowerment-based family support skills in working
with families.
Outcomes for Agencies
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Supervisors reported higher staff morale and
lower turnover.
Workers further developed outreach and
networking capacities so that families gained
more access to services at interagency and
cross-system levels.
Agency Outcomes, cont
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Agencies incorporated use of FDC
empowerment-based assessment tools to
help families identify their own strengths
Agency directors, policymakers, and state
officials expressed commitment to efforts to
implement empowerment-based family
support practices across programs, agencies
and systems.