What Permanency Means for Family Support & Stabilization
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: achieving permanency is our top priority for every person we work with. But what does achieving permanency actually look like? There could be as many answers to that question as there are people who need help from agencies like Bridges Homeward. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy question to explore. In that spirit, we’re starting a series on the blog called “What Permanency Means…”, where we’ll explore what permanency means for the many different people we serve. In this first installment, we’re looking at what permanency means for the parents and children we work with in our Family Support & Stabilization (FSS) program.
Our FSS families live in communities both in and around the city, and come from different backgrounds, countries, and economic statuses. We work with families who have been effected by addiction, families who have encountered financial crisis or instability, and we work with those struggling with medical and/or mental health challenges. Families that comes to us are in need of support with engaging in public services and connecting to resources that will support them in the long term. These services and resources can include financial support services, child care, the Department of Transitional Assistance and housing assistance.
Perhaps the one thing all our adult FSS clients have in common is that they are parents or caregivers and they love their children dearly. In working with FSS clients, the top permanency goal is for the children in the family to be able to live in a safe, nurturing home with their parents or caregivers. But building to this goal is complex work.
We assign two specialists to each case we work with in FSS. One specialist works with the children, and one works with the parent or caregiver of the children. One of our main goals is to help the parent improve their capacity to take care of their children by teaching them positive discipline techniques, supporting them in working through and overcoming challenges they face, validating them, helping them follow through on agreements they make for or with their children, helping them make and keep traditions with their children and making sure their children are safe.
We also try to provide an opportunity for the children we work with to develop a healthy relationship with an adult who isn’t their parent. By meeting them consistently every week in a structured environment, we’re modeling healthy interactions as well as providing them a positive adult relationship for the child.
We help our families as a whole – both parents/caregivers and children – expand their support networks. We understand that parenting is hard, and that families do better when they have a support system to celebrate with them, provide comfort and help them overcome life’s challenges. Sometimes expanding that support network means reaching out to extended family. Sometimes it means reaching out to their own communities, making friends, becoming more involved in school activities and finding parent support groups.
In our work with parents and caregivers, we spend a lot of time going over positive discipline techniques. We teach parents about how to use time outs and how to create structure and routine. One example is, if a five-year-old draws on the wall, a parent might react emotionally, raising their voice at the child and asking them, why would you do that? A more positive reaction would be to ask, in a calm tone, what happened that made you draw on the wall? We work with the parent to reframe their reactions so they can work with their children to identify a reason for their misbehavior, and in turn work with the child on their behavior. This approach is more constructive than just admonishing the child when they misbehave.
This parenting technique works well for parents of younger children. When modeling positive discipline for older kids and teenagers, it’s much harder. When working with families with teenagers, we encourage the family to develop healthy communication, appropriate boundaries and positive conflict resolution with each other. We work to create an inclusive environment where the family can work together to establish a stronger family unit that can work towards common goals.
Positive discipline techniques and building structure and routine are big focuses in almost every FSS case, but there are many other practices our family support specialists also employ when working with our clients. Sometimes, we work with the parents or caregivers to reach out to extended family members, to see if we can all work together to build a network of safety and support for the family. Sometimes, we connect families with resources that will make their day-to-day easier, such as Furnishing Hope, affordable day care programs and food banks. We often take a hands-on approach, showing families how they can find and access the resources they need and helping them build the confidence to advocate for themselves.
These interventions are modeled through with the Protective Factors Framework, which are factors that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) uses to assess each case. This framework includes parental resilience, a child’s social-emotional confidence, a family’s social connections, the concrete supports available in times of need and knowledge of parenting and child development.
After all of this careful planning and practice, what does permanency look like in each outcome of each FSS case? The reality is, it looks different for almost every family. Sometimes we can help a family set themselves up for a positive outcome in the long term. Other times, we help a family become more able to have healthy relationships and trust among themselves and with others, and we hope they will continue to build on these social-emotional skills in the future.
We can almost always help our clients build a more positive relationship where there was a more negative one before, or help them work through hard feelings to reach a place of emotional healing. At the end of our services we want every family to recognize their own self-worth. We aim to help them build confidence and strengthen their social-emotional skills so they’re better equipped to handle life’s challenges.