Let’s focus this time on some key intervention components:

Flexible Scheduling

IFPS therapists have a flexible schedule, serving only two families at a time, which allows them to give clients as much time as needed, when they need it.

Individually Tailored Services

IFPS programs offer flexible service packages, individually tailored to the needs of each family. Clients may need help with parenting skills, communications skills, managing depression or anger, problem solving, overcoming the effects of past trauma,  drug or alcohol use, or learning other life skills. They may request help in meeting such basic needs as food, clothing or shelter. They may work on building a social support network or relating to school or other social service personnel. Therapists are expected to have a wide array of treatment options and approaches available to them.

In IFPS, the therapist is responsible for addressing all the needs of the family. Providing hard services, such as helping clean an apartment or driving a client to the grocery store, is a powerful way to engage clients. Clients are grateful for the help, and are often the most willing to share information when they are involved in doing concrete tasks with their therapist.

Engagement and Motivation

The IFPS therapist takes responsibility for engaging clients and helping them increase their motivation for change. Engagement strategies include Reflective Listening, Motivational Interviewing, showing respect, acting as a guest in the family’s home, including family members in assessment and goal setting, meeting individually with family members as well as the family as a group, and meeting at times and places convenient to the family.

Assessment and Goal Setting

Workers conduct a client-directed assessment across the family’s life domains, including safety assessment and safety planning, domestic violence assessment, suicide assessment, and crisis planning. Behaviorally specific and measurable goals and outcomes are developed and evaluated with the family.

Behavior Change

Perhaps the most critical aspect of the IFPS intervention is the use of cognitive and behavioral research-based practices. Therapists directly employ these practices with family members, and also teach members how to use these strategies. These practices include:

• Motivational Interviewing,
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT),
• Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT),
• Relapse Prevention, and
• Harm Reduction Strategies,

Teaching families new skills lies at the heart of the intervention, as this empowers family members and allows them to continue to improve their family functioning after IFPS has ended:

• The most common skills taught include parenting, communication, assertiveness, bargaining and negotiation, anger management, depression management, time management, and household management.
• Therapists follow specific protocols for teaching skills including presentation of the skill to be learned, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, corrective feedback, coaching, praise, and encouragement, and generalization/maintenance training.
• Therapists break new skills into small steps to simplify the change process and help family members experience success.
• Therapists recognize and take advantage of unplanned opportunities (i.e., “teachable moments”) to use or teach behavior change strategies with family members.
• Therapists provide written materials to reinforce rationales and discussion regarding skills introduced during sessions, and assign homework and encourage frequent practice of new skills so family members have many opportunities to strengthen and integrate behavior changes.

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Posted by Peg Marckworth

Definition of IFPS

Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) are concentrated, in-home services designed to prevent unnecessary out-of-home placement of children. Families are referred at the point where an out-of-home placement is imminent. Referrals may come from a variety of child and family-serving systems including child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, and developmental disabilities. In home contact with families occurs within 24 hours of referral. IFPS therapists receive special training to provide families a mix of cognitive behavioral therapy, family counseling, teaching skills, and help with basic needs. Therapists serve only a few families at a time and are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most families receive approximately 40 hours of face to face service over the 4–6 weeks of the intervention.

IFPS is a model of service, not a philosophy to preserve families at all costs. If children cannot be safely maintained at home, then removal is in their best interest. On the other hand, IFPS is not appropriate for families whose children are not at high risk of removal. There are less intensive service models that can provide support to these families. IFPS is reserved for families facing imminent placement of a child.

Benefits of IFPS = Better Outcomes for Children

• Children in foster care spend an average of more than two years away from their homes.
• A child is twice as likely to die from abuse in foster care as in his own home.
• Maltreated children placed out-of-home exhibit significant behavior problems in comparison to maltreated children who remain in their homes.
• Maltreated children removed from their homes later experience higher delinquency rates, teen birth rates, and lower earnings than children who remain in their homes.

With appropriate targeting, IFPS diverts 80–90+ percent of children from out-of-home placement, but it is estimated that states provide IFPS to fewer than 1 in 10 children about to be placed in foster care.  IFPS programs adhering to the Homebuilders® model are very cost-effective: $2.54 of benefits for each dollar of cost due to reduced out-of-home placements and lowered incidence of abuse and neglect.

Safety Record

In over three decades of IFPS nationwide with thousands of families served, there has been less than a handful of child deaths linked to IFPS, either during or after the intervention.

To what can this strong safety record of IFPS be attributed?

• The safety of the child is the highest priority.
• IFPS therapists respond immediately to family crises.
• IFPS therapists meet with families in the home, which allows for a more thorough assessment and opportunities for effective intervention.
• IFPS therapists see families frequently, sometimes for hours at a time, in order to provide a quick response to emergencies and to teach skills during a crisis when families are most willing to learn new behaviors
• Prior to closing the intervention, IFPS therapists connect families with other community services to reinforce gains.
• Therapist training, supervision, and ongoing monitoring and quality assurance provide additional measures to ensure the safety of families.

We’d like to hear your views on the benefits of IFPS.
What is your experience with the safety record of IFPS interventions?

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Posted by Peg Marckworth