Pennsylvania’s efforts to integrate the Strengthening Families approach into its early childhood, child welfare and family service and support programs has been led since 2006 by a statewide Leadership Team, which is an initiative of the Pennsylvania Children’s Trust Fund and supported by the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), a division of the Departments of Human Services and Education. The Center for Schools and Communities contracts with OCDEL to facilitate its work. The state Leadership Team offers guidance to state child- and family-serving programs in incorporating the Strengthening Families approach within their work.
Mission
Pennsylvania, through the Strengthening Families Leadership Team, works to sustain and weave the Five Protective Factors, which are social and emotional competence of children, knowledge of parenting and child development, social connections, concrete supports in times of need and parental resilience, into policies, program and practice across child and family service systems.
Vision
Pennsylvania families will use a seamless network of committed partners who provide strength-based family supports.
Motto
Relationships – Strong Families – Respect
The state Leadership Team meets quarterly and addresses:
- Policy – Systems approach: Examine linkages among systems, development of organizational, local, regional and statewide policies and guidelines that support and grow the SFPF
- Practice – Among professionals: Growing opportunities for professional development about SFPF and experiences that emphasize a strengths-based approach with family work among health, human services, child welfare, early care and education and other professionals
- Partnerships – As partners: Expanding family and parents’ role in determining their own use of services and supports and participation in community, regional and statewide decision-making boards and making connections with organizations and systems that can promote this work
- Messaging – Asset orientation: Work to use strength-based messages, to shift our lens from blame and shame to awareness and growth
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- Pennsylvania Strengthening Families Leadership Team (SFLT) formed.
- SFLT received a grant from the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds to create a crosswalk of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework (SFPF) with the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) National Standards for Family-School Partnerships and the federal Head Start (HS) Family Engagement Outcomes. The goal of this work was to integrate these findings into the Keystone STARS, the quality rating and improvement system for Pennsylvania childcare providers. Though at the time there was not an intentional integration into the Keystone STARS system, this effort introduced a common language to family engagement that focused on supporting parents in a strength-based way.
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- Pennsylvania Children’s Trust Fund began utilizing into the Strengthening Families Protective Factors (SFPF) Framework into grant funding for child abuse and neglect prevention efforts.
- Incorporate SFPF framework and language into the STARS Worksheets.
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- The SFLT, in collaboration with the Center for Schools and Communities and the Pennsylvania Parent Information and Resource Center (PIRC), developed and completed a project entitled Strengthening Families in the Primary Grades, which developed online modules focusing on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors framework for school personnel.
- A pilot Community Café, a process for helping organizations gain insight into the strengths and needs of the families they serve through authentic family engagement, was held at the Fulton County Center for Families, a rural area in southcentral Pennsylvania.
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- The SFLT worked on more broadly disseminating the SFPF framework through public relations activities, developing state-specific evaluation of the SF work to date and integrating the ideas of various family strengthening and engagement concepts and frameworks, including the Head Start Parent, Family and Community Engagement Framework.
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- Thirty family support professionals participated in a training of trainers to be certified to present the Bringing the Protective Factors Framework to Life in Your Work courses to audiences throughout the state. This training, facilitated by the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds, provides participants with an “in-person” version of the online training currently available.
- A database to capture information about the participants in the courses was created.
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- Six Be Strong Families certified instructors begin to offer Parent Café Training Institutes to teach community-based teams how to conduct Parent Cafes.
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- Expansion of delivery of strengthening families courses through professional development instructor institutes.
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- SF Leadership Team approves two-year Strategic Plan.
- Keystone STARS include Strengthening Families courses as part of professional development for staff
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- Expansion from six to twelve Be Strong Parent Café instructors
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- In response to COVID-19, shifted instruction of Parent Cafes from place-based to online, allowing communities to continue to provide important connections for families.
Leadership Team Members
The Pennsylvania Strengthening Families Leadership Team’s members include representatives from the Departments of Human Services and Education, as well as community-based service partners, early care and education programs, local school districts and Intermediate Units.
Pennsylvania’s System-Building Efforts
The Pennsylvania Strengthening Families Leadership Team (SFLT) meets quarterly to oversee and guide the integration of the Strengthening Families approach into existing policies, programs and practice across child and family service systems where an investment in focused work can leverage opportunities to integrate Strengthening Families ideas into a large number of programs and/or have a sustainable impact over time. The SFLT works to build partnerships with parents and family members who inform programs and systems about the strengths that families have and ways services may be available to families.