Summary Social Work 378 - Child Welfare

Family Preservation Services – Tracy

Definition

 Family preservation services are intensive services
 Generally delivered in client’s home
 Over a brief, time-limited period
 Was developed to help prevent unnecessary out-of-home placements, keep
families together and preserve family bonds
 Targeted for families at imminent risk of having a child removed from their
home
 Referred families often have multiple and complex problems – child abuse,
child neglect, sexual abuse, alcohol, and other drug abuse, oppositional
behaviour in the home, school and community, incl. status offenses and
delinquency

Goals

1. To allow children to remain safely in their homes
2. To maintain and strengthen family bonds
3. To stabilise the crisis situation that precipitated the need for placement
4. To increase the family’s coping skills and competencies
5. To facilitate the family’s use of appropriate formal and informal helping
resources
 In short, family preservation services are intended to “remove the risk of harm
to the child instead of removing the child from the home”

Types of services

 Family resource – community based services that assists and supports all
adults in their role as parents
 Family-centred services – counselling or education for families with problems
that threaten their stability
 Intensive family-centred services – when removal of child is imminent or when
reunification of the child with the family is taking place

,Common programme features

 Only families at imminent risk of placement of a child are accepted
 Services are crisis orientated
 Intake and assessment procedures ensure that no child is left in danger
 Focus on family as a unit
 Workers see families at home – frequent home visits
 Service approach offers a mix of clinical and concrete interventions –
counselling, education, skills training, information and referral, advocacy and
so on
 Each worker carries small caseload – not the case in SA
 Programmes limit the length of involvement with the family to a short period -
1-6 months

Process of intervention

 Intake
 Reserved to families at risk of placement – intended to be last services
rendered before child is placed
 Most programmes have eligibility guidelines
 Intake is usually not voluntary
 Engagement
 Engagement process NB – due to at risk status and non-voluntary
status of clients
 NB to the family’s continued involvement and to the service’s future
success
 Engagement involves forming a trusting working relationship with the
family
 A non-judgemental tone is set at the first home visit – may last several
hours so that all the family members are heard
 Family preservation workers rely heavily on active listening
 Worker avoids overloading the family with paperwork, assessment
forms and the like

,  Worker generally tries to be of immediate use to the family – through
providing a prompt referral or resource or meeting a concrete need –
not always possible in SA due to lack of resources
 Families seen by family preservation workers tend to live in chaotic
homes
 Staying on top of things and being a consistent presence to the family
are important practice skills for the worker
 Assessment
 Conduct assessment with the family’s full involvement
 Worker places less emphasis on labelling and diagnosis than on
understanding the family’s reality and their day-to-day functioning
 Special attention is paid to assessing the safety of the child and other
family members in the home and in assessing the family’s need of
basic resources – ex. housing, transportation, child care
 In addition – skills in parenting, coping, behaviour management or child
discipline and communication are explored
 Most family preservation programmes learn about the family’s use of
formal and informal resources and types of social support systems in
place for them
 Genogram and eco-map as assessment and intervention tool
 Goal setting
 Overriding goal of family preservation services is to keep the family
safely together – objectives vary depending on the family’s needs and
wants
 Family preservation workers listen carefully to what family members
want to change and involve them in the realistic setting of goals – make
these goals top priority of intervention
 Typical goals might be improve parenting, communication and anger
management skills
 Goals set tend to be behavioural, specific and small – reasonable
within the service limited time

,  Intervention
 Provide concrete services, therapeutic or clinical services and
educational services
 Listening, encouraging and reframing
 Typically involve the whole family – ex. family discussion about house
rules
 Some intervention activities might involve the children, the parent or
other family members separately
 NB component of all intensive family preservation services is concrete
services – ex. providing food parcels
 Evaluation and termination
 Process of termination actually begins with the first visit – time limited
nature of services is stated
 Family members are thought to be more motivated to make changes
when they know when the services will end
 Explicit use of family rituals might be made at termination – gift giving
for example
 In terms of clinical evaluation – follow-up contacts are typically made at
set intervals after termination (three months, six months and so forth)

Conclusion

 These type of services are viable service alternative for children and families at risk
of placement
 View in context of service continuum – there are services before and after these
services
 Problems and needs of families referred to these service organisations seem to be
more complex and difficult than ever
 Lack of community resources and support make their situations even more difficult to
resolve
 Family preservation services on their own cannot be expected to address large scale
social and economic problems
 One characteristic of family preservation services that will have long-standing impact
on child welfare – family focus – demonstrate a belief and commitment to families as
partners in the helping process.