Children's Trust

Everyone has something to contribute to a community family strengthening effort. The following are suggestions for ways your partnership might engage and collaborate with specific groups.

Partnering With Faith Communities

• Attend regularly or make a one-time presentation on protective factors to interfaith groups working on community needs and services. (See Talking Points.)
• Listen and seek to understand the faith communities’ beliefs and values regarding protecting children and strengthening families. Demonstrating respect for their faith is important when approaching religious and lay leaders.
• Train religious and lay leaders about the five protective factors, as well as how to recognize the signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect, work with victims and their families, and make appropriate referrals.
• Organize parent education and support group meetings at faith community facilities.
• Support the development of mentoring programs within congregations for children and families under stress.
• Encourage religious and lay leaders to publicly acknowledge child abuse and neglect as a major concern for the faith community, and affirm that they are dedicated to supporting families and protecting children.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With Parents and Caregivers

• Reach out to community parent councils or forums. Support the development of such councils where they do not currently exist.
• Provide community-based family mentoring services to strengthen family relationships.
• Organize workshops to teach parents how to access services to meet their families’ needs, including finding adequate medical care, pursuing educational opportunities, and accessing job information. Include parent leaders as presenters.
• Create opportunities for parent volunteers to participate in community activities such as safety initiatives, after-school programs, mentoring programs, food drives, and other events.
• Ask experienced parent leaders to serve as mentors for family members who are just joining the group.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With the Courts

• Provide information, tools, and training about protective factors to judges, guardians ad litem, and others involved in making best interests determinations for children.
• Create substantive roles for parents and community stakeholders in the juvenile dependency court system to promote a better understanding of the challenges faced by those who come before the court.
• Set up formal referral systems to direct parents to legal service providers within the community.
• Create support groups among parents currently or previously involved with the court system.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With the Media

• Develop a clear communications plan that includes your initiative’s key messages, communication objectives, and targeted outreach to media outlets.
• Plan a communitywide campaign that gives increased visibility to community partners and families being served by the community partnership. Use the sample press release and public service announcements.
• Consider inviting media representatives to participate in your communitywide effort, and keep them informed regularly of your progress and challenges.
• Propose an editorial briefing on the protective factors and how community members can help families stay healthy and strong.
• Offer members of your community partnership as experts on family health and safety, protective factors, and child abuse prevention.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With Early Childhood Centers and Schools

• Attend parent meetings or conduct community forums or workshops with early childhood centers and schools to talk with parents about protective factors.
• Schedule joint trainings with staff about the protective factors and child abuse prevention, and how this information can be incorporated into their work with parents.
• Seek opportunities to sponsor joint events with early childhood centers and schools.
• As these relationships develop, you may offer to provide onsite services to children and families. This can be an important first step in building families’ comfort with pursuing services.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With Business Leaders

• Recruit a high-profile community business leader to serve on the governance board for your community-based partnership. Encourage him or her to challenge other business leaders to contribute to the effort.
• Publicly recognize companies with family-friendly services and policies, such as onsite child care, flexible scheduling, and telecommuting.
• Identify ways that employee volunteer programs could work to support safe and healthy families in the community.
• Partner with businesses to offer workshops for employees on the protective factors, child development, parenting skills, and stress reduction.
• Ask businesses to consider including family-strengthening messages in their advertising or product packaging.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With Policymakers

• Write or call your local legislator and make him or her aware of the research demonstrating how the five protective factors help prevent child abuse and neglect. Briefly point out your community’s current strengths and needs.
• Host a community event with your legislator at a local school or family center and invite community partners and families.
• Organize a town hall meeting with your legislator and other community leaders to address issues affecting local families.
• Build long-term relationships with your legislator and his or her staff; keep them informed of community issues.

(Back to Top)

Partnering With Culturally Diverse Families and Communities

Partnering with families and communities of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, lifestyles, and beliefs requires an organizational investment in addressing differences in positive and productive ways. Here are a few examples:

• Different cultures define the concept of “family” in very different ways. Respect each family’s own definition.
• Begin a workshop or retreat with a demonstration of spirituality drawn from the culture of one or more of the families present. This can prepare participants emotionally and mentally for the activities of the day, while acknowledging a strength of that family’s culture to the entire group.
• Classes that introduce traditional child-rearing practices from various cultures may help young parents raise their children in a positive and culturally knowledgeable manner.
• Ethnic street fairs offer families a way to enjoy their cultural heritage in the company of others. Community organizations can provide prevention information and educational materials at booths and through family-friendly activities like parent-child art workshops and puppet shows.

For more information about culturally competent work with families, visit: www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/cultural/preventing.cfm

Authors: Child Welfare Information Gateway, Children’s Bureau, FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention

The following activities may be useful in support of adopting a communitywide protective-factors framework:

• Cross-training. Community partners each have their own ways of working with children and families. Training across disciplines can help to create a common understanding of what the protective factors are, which strategies are most effective for strengthening families, and how a protective-factors approach supports each partner’s work with children and families.
• Adapting intake and assessment tools and protocols. Central to this process is moving from a needs-assessment approach to a more comprehensive assessment that looks at the family’s needs, strengths, and protective factors. Encourage community providers to integrate a common set of questions, based on the protective factors, into their intake and assessment tools and protocols. This can help ensure that strategies to build protective factors are an integral part of service planning with all families.
• Creating a consumer voice in relation to protective factors. Many Strengthening Families sites have worked to build plain-language tools that help parents understand what the protective factors are, why they are important, and what families can expect from community partners that are committed to a protective-factors approach. These tools help to ensure that protective factors are built with families.
• Creating service collaborations. While the protective factors are universal to all families, they may need to be augmented or adapted for families experiencing particular stressors or traumas. In these cases, collaborations based on the protective factors may yield the most effective support system for families. For example, an organization that understands social networking might work with a domestic violence shelter to develop a social-connections strategy that is sensitive to safety-planning issues.

Authors: Child Welfare Information Gateway, Children’s Bureau, FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention

Suggested Activities

The following activities may be useful in support of adopting a communitywide protective-factors framework:

• Cross-training. Community partners each have their own ways of working with children and families. Training across disciplines can help to create a common understanding of what the protective factors are, which strategies are most effective for strengthening families, and how a protective-factors approach supports each partner’s work with children and families.
• Adapting intake and assessment tools and protocols. Central to this process is moving from a needs-assessment approach to a more comprehensive assessment that looks at the family’s needs, strengths, and protective factors. Encourage community providers to integrate a common set of questions, based on the protective factors, into their intake and assessment tools and protocols. This can help ensure that strategies to build protective factors are an integral part of service planning with all families.
• Creating a consumer voice in relation to protective factors. Many Strengthening Families sites have worked to build plain-language tools that help parents understand what the protective factors are, why they are important, and what families can expect from community partners that are committed to a protective-factors approach. These tools help to ensure that protective factors are built with families.
• Creating service collaborations. While the protective factors are universal to all families, they may need to be augmented or adapted for families experiencing particular stressors or traumas. In these cases, collaborations based on the protective factors may yield the most effective support system for families. For example, an organization that understands social networking might work with a domestic violence shelter to develop a social-connections strategy that is sensitive to safety-planning issues.

Authors: Child Welfare Information Gateway, Children’s Bureau, FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention