August 2018 – Family Resource Center Association

Ongoing Professional Training and Mentoring Helps to Serve Families

Strengthening families is at the core of what we do and we accomplish that by strengthening our own skills and that of our Members. FRCA is proud to offer three different trainings to our Members and community partners to help family development workers build skills to work with families in a strengths-based and goal-oriented way. The trainings provide:

A holistic view of how a Family Resource Center operates.
Techniques on how to engage families and motivate change.
Comprehensive tools on how to track family progress and goals.

FRCA trains professionals across Colorado. Each training has a diverse representation from different agencies, allowing for fruitful discussion and peer learning, as well as a streamlined approach to working with families all over the state. If a family moves from one Family Resource Center to another, we know that they will get the same treatment and attention.

VIEW OUR UPCOMING TRAINING SCHEDULE

Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening and Support

FRCA adopted The Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening & Support in 2013. They are the first and only standards in the country to integrate and operationalize the Principles of Family Support Practice with the Strengthening Families Protective Factor Frameworks and its research-based evidence-informed Five Protective Factors. The vision is that their implementation will help ensure that families are supported and strengthened through quality practice. FRCA is the only organization in Colorado trained and authorized to conduct this training.

The Standards are designed to be used by all stakeholders–public departments, foundations, community-based organizations, and parents–across different kinds of Family Strengthening and Family Support programs as a tool for planning, providing, and assessing quality practice. The Standards create common language and expectations in the Family Support and Strengthening field across different kinds of programs, such as Family Resource Centers, home visiting programs, and child development programs.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing is a counseling technique used to help people identify their need for change and their readiness to make the change. This is a client-centered, self-directed approach and a great skill to have when working with families who are seeking support from an agency.

This training helps workers and supervisors identify where individuals fall in the Stages of Change, recognize change talk, and develop skills in using open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarizing.

Colorado Family Support Assessment 2.0

Colorado Family Support Assessment 2.0 (CFSA 2.0) is the primary assessment tool used by the Family Resource Center Association’s network of family resource centers to assess family strengths and needs, and monitor progress towards family self-reliance and increased conditions that protect children against mistreatment. Non-FRCA agencies around the state and country have started to implement this tool into their assessments of families as well.

The CFSA 2.0 is comprised of three sections: Part A assesses 14 self-reliance and family stability domains including income, housing, transportation, food security, health coverage, etc. Part B assess the five factors that protect against child abuse and neglect. Part C identifies areas where families would like to make a change and how ready they are to make the change.

The most effective way to complete the CFSA 2.0 is by building rapport and trust with the families. In order to do so, FRCA believes developing Motivational Interviewing skills is the best way to engage families and assist them in identifying areas of which they would like to change.

Our goal is to have as many people in the family support field equipped with the training and resources to serve families in the best way possible. We are passionate about strengthening families to make true and lasting change in their lives. By equipping those who work with families each day, we are creating a culture of continuous quality and improvement for families.

If you are interested in attending a training, please take a look at our upcoming schedule.

By Anna Michaels, Project Manager at Family Resource Center Association.

Learning to Read and Write at Aurora Community Connection

AUGUST 13, 2018–Every so often, we like to post an uplifting story from one of our 29 Member Centers to bring hope and support to family development workers and caregivers in Colorado. This week, we’re in Aurora, a dense suburb east of downtown Denver. In the late 1970s and 80s, Aurora was the fastest growing municipality in the United States and today is the 54^th most populous city in the US. The racial makeup of the city is 61.1{5174c02ae8af42f0163c0bde243aeca1ac9f4d91a19005bb7e698c1ed57806ea} White, 15.7{5174c02ae8af42f0163c0bde243aeca1ac9f4d91a19005bb7e698c1ed57806ea} African American, 4.9{5174c02ae8af42f0163c0bde243aeca1ac9f4d91a19005bb7e698c1ed57806ea} Asian and 28.7{5174c02ae8af42f0163c0bde243aeca1ac9f4d91a19005bb7e698c1ed57806ea} Hispanic or Latino. Aurora also houses a sizeable refugee population, with about 30,000 Ethiopians and Eritreans living in the Denver-Aurora area. Because of this large and diverse population, there are a lot of needs within families and communities that the local government does not have the capacity to address. That’s where FRCA Member Aurora Community Connection (ACC) Family Resource Center comes in.

ACC was founded in 2007 in order to address a gap in services for families in north Aurora. ACC is open to all families, but emphasizes support for low-income families who are marginalized by language and culture. A core value that distinguishes ACC from other non-profits is a commitment to strategically leverage community resources through partnerships and engaging the talents of community residents. ACC staff have cultivated a strong degree of trust with local residents, which contributes to a particularly successful approach to community outreach. As a result, groups such as Aurora Public Schools, Aurora Mental Health, Cooking Matters and the City of Aurora turn to ACC to connect program resources to families in Aurora. A recent story of success within these programs center around two girls who were struggling with reading and writing at their age levels.

Illeana*, age five, began in the ACC tutoring program last summer without a firm grasp of letter recognition in either Spanish or English. Quiet and determined, Illeana worked closely with one of the center’s bilingual youth tutors and slowly mastered the letters of the alphabet through repeated and varied practice. She is now ready to start kindergarten at the expected level of learning for children her age.

Beatrice, age ten, began the tutoring program totally apathetic about reading and writing. She was clear about her reluctance to show any enthusiasm for program activities, and was easily distracted and off task. However, slowly and surely, thanks to her repeated pairing with a particularly engaging youth tutor, Beatrice began to take pleasure in the act of reading for its own sake. She realized there is a whole world of books in ACC’s program library she could connect with on a personal level. These connections were the spark that helped Beatrice to move from short picture books to increasingly complex chapter books. Beatrice comes from a difficult family situation, and told center staff that she felt very welcome and comfortable in the program. Towards the end, she even started coming for tutoring every single day!

Thanks to the wonderful family development workers at Aurora Community Connection, these two young girls are now thriving in their education and will feel the positive impacts of the family resource center for years to come. FRCA hopes that you will find inspiration in these positive stories and continue to work hard to change the trajectory for families around Colorado.

To learn more about Aurora Community Connection, visit their website at www.auroracommunityconnection.com.

If you would like to submit your own success story, please contact Erin Osovets at [email protected].

*names have been changed

Data is Really About People

August 6, 2018–In 1993, a fledging network of family resource centers emerged out of sheer will and passion to serve our communities where needs persisted and services lagged. The formal association, Family Resource Center Association was established a few years later in 1998. Since then, our network has increasingly used a “data-informed” approach to strengthen services through disciplined practice and decision making.

So here’s the thing. Data in nonprofits is really about people; about our compulsive drive to reveal the truth about our impact; about how we work with people to implement change.

Data-informed practice is people-informed practice.

Several years ago, our network started asking: How do we define our impact? We employed simple data tools to hone in on how many people our network touched with services, directly or indirectly, and into which Colorado communities we reached. We asked questions such as: How do we expand into underserved areas of the state? How can we serve more people in a deeper way? We increased our focus on offering a variety of evidenced-based services in more communities.

As we moved further into data-informed territory, the complexity of tools evolved. Since 2009 our network has used a relational database, Efforts to Outcomes (ETO), to collect participant-level data across the state. (Depending on who you ask, “ETO” might as well be a four-letter word. No one said data collection is easy!) Having a common database helps tell the story of communities across the state that need and value our services.

Every new revelation begs new questions, and we continued to implement more rigorous data practices. Now family development workers use a tool created by social science researchers called the Colorado Family Support Assessment 2.0. It takes into account 14 factors, including: employment and income, housing and food security, physical and mental health, and more. Is it perfect? Of course not. Will it look different five years from now? Maybe. (Gasp!) Does it encourage us to look at what we are doing well, and what we could do better? Absolutely.

Once we had a tool to measure “self-reliance,” the conversation shifted. How would we ensure our work with families helps them achieve progress in areas that are important to them? Family development workers now earn a certification in a technique pioneered by counselors called “Motivational Interviewing.” It turns out that helping people make change in their life requires a similar approach whether it involves giving up smoking or deciding to develop and adhere to a personal budget.

We’ve been offering this approach long enough that we have data to demonstrate that our family development model works. We know that people across the state come to our centers with a vulnerability in one or more of the 14 areas we assess. They also come with strengths and dreams.

Our data, as analyzed by social science researchers that we call “evaluators,” shows that people improve to a more stable place thanks to our strengths-based approach. Hence, here at Mountain Resource Center in Conifer, Colorado, which is also a Mile High United Way Center for Family Opportunity site, we can say that “an external evaluator found that family development participants experienced statistically significant growth in economic self-sufficiency domains.”

We owe it to ourselves, our families, and our supporters to understand the reach and depth of our services. For this, data-informed practice has been, and will continue to be, transformative. At the same time, data-informed practice places additional requirements on our staff whose case loads are full. It challenges our leaders to develop methods for analyzing data even though agencies are stretched thin. We appreciate that our supporters understand the demands of this high-quality, intensive, people-focused approach.

And remember: data isn’t just about numbers. Anecdotes are another type of data we collect. As one of our families recently told us: For most of us, this is enough to keep us striving, out of sheer will and passion, to better understand and meet our community’s needs.

For more information about Mountain Resource Center or the Family Resource Center closest to you, visit our Centers Page.

By Tracy Atlas (Mountain Resource Center)

Ongoing Professional Training and Mentoring Helps to Serve Families

VIEW OUR UPCOMING TRAINING SCHEDULE

Learning to Read and Write at Aurora Community Connection

Data is Really About People

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