Developing a Community-Based Model for Integrated Family Center Practice

Abstract

This chapter describes integrated family center practice that offers protection, nurturance, and avenues for development for parents and their children. The focus is the integrated family center (or family resource center) as a community-based single-site system of care, which arguably has an important role in the development of safe communities and new visions for children's services. As an alternative to existing child welfare services, they address fragmentation, defensive practice, and the disconnection from community that are serious problems in protective services. As stable community-based programs, integrated family centers provide a therapeutic milieu with a complex array of services to meet child welfare's primary goal: child well-being and family support. These integrated centers have the advantage of being a community, a place to belong to that grows with the family.

Using complexity theory in kinship practice

“…On the contrary, there was much evidence of experienced practice and surges of great creativity in their general practice. However, the narrative of this collaborative enquiry group echoed our concern about disproportionate anxiety for children and family practitioners, along with the demands of audit, blame, proceduralism, reductionism, anti-professional stances, and all the rest, which are well documented (Menzies Lyth 1989;Norris 1990;Smith 2000Smith , 2005Parton 2004;Heap 2005;Oxman et al 2005;Warren-Adamson & Lightburn 2005;Munro 2011). The group's narrative, moreover, mirrored practice concerns about the challenge of sustaining relationships, the way values have become less explicit (Trevithick 2003;Ferguson 2005;Guardian 2006;Ruch 2007).…”

Open pre-schools at integrated health services - A program theory

“…The professional compliance approach facilitated the creation of an informal social network that might remind us of a persistent family [2, 13]. Parents interacted actively in dialogues or merely listened to others while they played with their child/children.…”

Family Centers in Rural Communities: Lessons for Policy, Planning, and Practice

“…Rural Communities much of the literature on family centers suggests the "best" family centers are those that address a wide range of needs for many different users (Cannan & Warren, 1997). Integrated family center practice offers a continuum of programs and services that address multiple agendas, ranging from the promotion of child, youth, and family well-being, to prevention and early intervention programs and services targeted to at-risk children and families, to mandatory services and programs for families whose children have been deemed "in need of protection" by child protection authorities (Stones, 2001;Warren-Adamson & Lightburn, 2006).…”