Key Protective Factors
The five protective factors offer a framework for changes at the systems, policy, and practice level through everyday actions:
- Parental resilience – Managing stress and functioning well when faced with challenges, adversity, and trauma.
- Social connections – Positive relationships that provide emotional, informational, instrumental, and spiritual support.
- Knowledge of parenting and child development – Understanding child development and parenting strategies that support physical, cognitive, language, social and emotional development.
- Concrete support in times of need – Access to concrete support and services that address a family’s needs and help minimum stress caused by challenges.
- Social and emotional competence of children – Family and child interactions can help children develop the ability to communicate clearly, recognize and regulate their emotions and establish and maintain relationships.
Colorado Strengthening Families Network
FRCA co-hosts the Colorado Strengthening Families Network, a quarterly online learning community for professionals across sectors to stay on top of new research and best practices related to the protective factors.
Essentials for Childhood
In partnership with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, FRCA is the Essentials for Childhood Community Norms State Intermediary.
This project, supported with funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, serves to prevent child maltreatment in five pilot communities by addressing three community norms:
- help-seeking with parenting
- accessing food
- collective prosperity focused on the narrative about who is responsible in supporting families to prevent child maltreatment.
These norms will support the parallel efforts of local public health partners to strengthen economic support for families both at the level of creating policy and at the level of families engaging with supports.
