Family Engagement Involving Families in Their Children

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Family Engagement Involving Families in Their
Childrens Health Care

• Twila Fundark, LISW, Region 1 School Mental
  Health Advocate
• Delia Mendoza, LISW, Region 4 School Mental
  Health Advocate

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Objectives

• Participants will be able to
• Assess self-interest identify the importance of
  family engagement.
• Learn different strategies of family engagement.
• Identify ways to foster pro-active families and
  understanding multicultural perspectives.
• Explore differences in schools of thought for
  family individual therapy.
• Identify benefits of family therapy.

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Where are you when it comes to Family
Engagement?When you hear the term Family
Engagement, you first think it is.

• a). A new type of physical education.
• b). Getting the parents to sign all the forms and
  consents.
• c). Someone in the family just got engaged to be
  married.
• d). None of the above.

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Where are you.If you were asked to lead an
effort to increase family engagement in your
School Based setting, you would

• a) Rather have a root canal.
• b) Think about it for a minute to two, have
  another cup of coffee, remember that your real
  job is enough to keep you busy 24/7.
• c) Wonder how you might do something like that..
• d) Jump for joy that someone wants you to tackle
  this as part of your job.

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Where are youOn a scale of 1 -10 (1 being
low family engagement 10 being the highest)

• 1 2 3 4 5
  6 7 8 9 10
• Low Somewhat High

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Why is Family Engagement important?

• In academics, it is positively related to
  achievement and success in life.
• In treatment, it fosters treatment effectiveness
  and youth resiliency.

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Other Benefits for children with engaged
parents

• Enhance literacy
• Increase school readiness
• Higher grades, test scores, and graduation rates
• Decreased use of drugs alcohol
• Regular attendance
• Increased motivation, better self-esteem
• Graduation ready attend higher education
• Fewer instances of violent behavior
• Department of Ed, 2001

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Why Invest in Family Engagement?BECAUSE WE ARE
PARTNERS IN THE WELFARE OF THEIR CHILDREN.

• Better understand their needs, concerns and
  lifestyles.
• Empower families to be informed and to take part
  of the healthcare decisions of their child.
• Better understand multicultural perspectives.
• Communication is a key factor we can role
  model.
• Family engagement is crucial even for
  adolescents.

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Why parents play a very important role?

• All parents can have an influence on their
  children regardless of socioeconomic
  racial/ethnic, educational background.
• IDEA Partnership, 2009

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Framing families into the picture (General)

• Support-serving as a positive resource center for
  families.
• Empower-promoting family involvement at the
  highest level.

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Strategies for Engagement

• What are their interests needs as parents?
• What could meet their needs?
• Other health care concerns?
• Other community concerns?
• Network of family and friends?
• Culture and traditions?

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Addressing needs and barriers

• Languages differences varied health beliefs.
• Daily commitments responsibilities may affect
  time, energy, attention.
• Parents level of comfort.
• Transportation, remoteness, etc.
• Stigma and labeling.
• Parents as obstacles.
• Fearing the consequences of disclosure
  (hospitalization).
• Lack of resources.

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Cultural Traditional

• The role of the extended family.
• The communal support provides benefit.
• The health of the family unit and the welfare of
  each member is important.

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Fostering pro-active families

• The usage of phone calls or emails reduces
  perceived barriers to services access.
• Include families in services decision-making
  about services offered.
• Children report higher levels of self-efficiency
  and greater investment in the treatment process.
• Collaboration with parents in the treatment
  process reduces the time spent in the treatment
  environment.

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General Systems Theory

• A system represents a set of units that stand in
  some consistent relationship to one another.
• A system is organized around relationships.
• Elements (units) interact with each other in a
  predictable, organized fashion.
• Units, once combined form an entity - a whole,
  greater than the sum of its parts.
• No element can be understood in isolation.

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Family Systems Theory

• Individuals are best understood through assessing
  the interactions within the entire family.
• Symptoms often viewed as an expression of a
  dysfunction within a family.
• Individuals are connected to living systems.
• Addresses the family unit including the
  identified patient.
• Family provides the primary context for
  understanding how individuals function.
• Its relational.

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Family Therapy

• From a systems view-
• Relationships are the agents of change
• Think circularly (A B mutually influence one
  another)
• Ask, what?
• Treat the interactions between individuals.
• Focus on the present.
• Allyn Bacon 2003

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Time for Role Play

• Need 4
• Volunteers!

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Observations.

• 1st Scenario
• 2nd Scenario

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Individual Therapy vs. Family Therapy

• Individual Therapies

• Family Therapies

• Focus on content
• Has not generally attended to context
• Can be reductionist
• Recognize individual developmental

• Focus on process
• Attempt to understand context
• Greater complexity
• Recognize individual family development
• Allyn Bacon 2003

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Benefits of family therapy

• Symptoms as interactional influences.
• Promotes communication.
• No blaming for a particular dysfunction.
• Family is empowered.
• New perspective on understanding working
  through both the individual problems and
  relationship concerns.
• Changes are faster and easier to maintain built
  in support system.

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Tips-Engaging families in services

• Make services user-friendly to parents.
• Validate parent frustration and the fact their
  child is experiencing difficulties.
• Never blame parents for childs problems.
• Appeal to parents desire for things to be
  better.
• Address misperceptions about learning parenting
  skills and/or parent training techniques.

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Tips

• Dont give up family engagement is a long and
  sometimes difficult process.
• Be genuinely interested about their lives.
• Educate family about benefits of their
  participation
• improve emotional climate of family
• increase cohesion
• reduce conflict

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Perspective

• - If we are always arriving and departing, it is
  also true that we are eternally anchored. Ones
  destination is never a place, but rather a new
  way of looking at things.

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Questions?