Pennsylvania Strengthening Families

Strengthening Families™ is an approach to working with families that builds upon family strengths, rather than focusing on deficits. It is not a curriculum or a program but instead offers a framework of five research-based Protective Factors that serve as a foundation for parents to rear healthy children in a safe environment.

When these protective factors are robust in families, the likelihood of child abuse and neglect is reduced. This approach benefits all families not just those experiencing stress. Implementing the Strengthening Families™ approach is about small but significant changes in everyday practice, as well as the shifts in policies and systems that allow and promote those changes.

What Is Strengthening Families?

The Strengthening Families™ approach is built on two key beliefs: 1) All families have strengths, and 2) All families need support. The Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework shifts the focus from “what’s wrong” to “what’s strong” and encourages us to see strengths and promote the development of protective factors that keep families strong.

The Strengthening Families Approach

• Benefits ALL families.
• Builds on family strengths, buffers risk and promotes a better quality of life.
• Can be implemented through small but significant changes in everyday actions.
• Builds on and can become a part of existing programs, strategies, systems and community opportunities.
• Is grounded in research, practice and implementation knowledge.

The five Protective Factors are the foundation of the Strengthening Families™ approach. Extensive research supports the common-sense notion that when these protective factors are present and robust in a family, the likelihood of child abuse and neglect diminishes.

The Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework is:

• A purposeful and intentional approach to working with families in all child- and family-serving systems.
• Understandable concepts for parents and professionals to grasp.
• A universally inclusive approach that values the input of parents working side-by-side with professionals.
• Common sense (or logical) linkages to many federal and state requirements.
• Support for all child and family service systems to view the connectedness of our work.
• A common language for all of us to adopt.

For more information and to view the logic model for Strengthening Families, please review this handout from the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Strengthening Families™ Implementation: Five Core Functions

The Strengthening Families™ approach, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, is implemented in a wide variety of programs, agencies, systems, communities and states. Across all of these settings, implementation includes five core functions that are critical to effective implementation:

• Building an infrastructure to advance and sustain the work.
• Building parent partnerships.
• Deepening knowledge and understanding of a protective factors approach.
• Shifting practice, policies and systems toward a protective factors approach.
• Ensuring accountability.

Everyday actions are the small but significant changes in our approach to working with parents and caregivers that create an environment where families can build protective factors.

View Everyday Actions That Help Build Protective Factors PDF from the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Parental Resilience

Parental resilience is the ability to cope and bounce back and bounce forward from all types of challenges. Parents are continually managing different amounts of stress in their daily lives. The challenges caregivers face can be daunting. In the Strengthening Families™ framework, we think about two different components of resilience – the ability to cope with stress in general and the ability to parent well in times of stress.

When asked, parents have described this protective factor as:

• I will continue to have courage during stress or after a crisis.
• Resilience = Courage.
• Resilience means being strong AND flexible.

Social Connections

Friends, family members, neighbors and other members of a community who provide emotional support and concrete assistance are invaluable to parents. Since social isolation is strongly connected to child maltreatment, this protective factor ensures that parents are connected to people who support their parenting.

Being new to a community, recently divorced or a first-time parent makes a support network even more important; it may require extra effort from programs to help families build the new relationships they need.

When asked, parents have described this protective factor as:

• I have people who know me (friends) and at least one person who supports my parenting.
• Social Connections = Community
• Parents need friends.

Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

Parents need accurate information about rearing young children and the appropriate expectations for their behavior. This protective factor helps to define what parenting looks like when families have good information and skills to help their children at every stage of development. It is especially important when parents are committed to change the parenting patterns they experienced as children and want alternatives for their own children.

When asked, parents have described this protective factor as:

• I stay curious and am responsive to what my child needs.
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development = Health
• Being a great parent is part natural and part learned.

Concrete Supports in Times of Need

Every family – at some point – needs support. “Times of need” do not only occur in families in poverty, and they may not always be related to material needs. All families have times when organizational or institutional supports are helpful, whether it’s the birth of a new child, raising a child with special needs, finding academic supports or dealing with mental illness, substance abuse or domestic violence.

Not knowing where to turn in a crisis or how to find help can be extraordinarily stressful for families and cause significant trauma for children. When parents build this protective factor, they know how to access services and be an advocate for their family.

When asked, parents have described this protective factor as:

• My family can access basic needs when they need it.
• Concrete Supports in Time of Need = Freedom
• We all need help sometimes.

Social and Emotional Competence of Children

Social and emotional competence is the foundation of every child’s development. It comes through the ongoing interactions between children and the adults in their lives, beginning with parents and other family members. The parent’s capability to foster the child’s ability to talk, regulate their behavior and interact positively with others is key to the child’s development.

Nurturing and attachment in the earliest days and months of a baby’s life is the beginning point for social and emotional competence that develops over time.

When asked, parents have described this protective factor as:

• My child feels loved, has a sense of belonging and can get along with others.
• Social and Emotional Competence in Children = Compassion
• Social and emotional competence in children means helping your children communicate and give them the love and respect they need.

For more information on these Protective Factors and the research behind them, visit the research section on the Center for the Study of Social Policy website.