We’ll Be Back Soon

We’re taking a break from the blog in order to prepare for an upcoming gala event in celebration of the 40th anniversary of IFPS.

We’ll be back on July 23 to share BIG NEWS.

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Posted by Peg Marckworth

Brown Family Case Study

Facts_On_IFPS_CoverThe following case study appeared in the Facts on Intensive Family Preservation Services packet that was written and produced by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in 1994.

The case involves a family in which a child was at risk of psychiatric hospitalization.

The Brown Family
Buffalo, New York

At age 11, Sam Brown burned down his neighbor’s garage and was sent away to a residential youth facility in upstate New York. Two years later he returned home. The adjustment wasn’t easy. Sam was fighting with his two younger brothers constantly and their mother was having a difficult time handling them. Sam’s dad worked at night and was reluctant to discipline the children, fearing he would lose his temper.

With all three boys home from school for summer vacation tensions in the house mounted. One afternoon, while’ playing outside, Sam and his nine-year-old brother, Frank, got into a violent battle. When Sam began choking Frank, a neighbor called the police. Sam, accompanied by his mother, was taken by the police to the psychiatric emergency room of the Erie County Medical Center.

The hospital called in a caseworker from the Home Based Crisis Intervention Program at Buffalo General Hospital, which works with kids from 5 to 18 years old. The program caseworker, trained in psychiatric nursing, drove Sam and his mother, Anne, home and returned the next morning to begin working with the family.

Over a six-week period the caseworker spent almost every other day with the family and was able to closely observe their behavior. His first discovery was that Sam was not always the instigator of the fights with his brothers. Frank, the middle son, often started a brawl and then complained to his mother that Sam was to blame. While Sam was away, Frank had assumed the role of “number one son” and was upset about relinquishing this status to his older brother. The caseworker made Anne aware that Frank was frequently baiting Sam and that she needed to direct her discipline toward all three boys and not just her oldest son.

The caseworker counseled Anne at home and during frequent phone conversations. They worked on building her confidence in her parenting skills and her ability to take charge when a fight broke out between her sons. “Anne had good parenting skills,” the caseworker recalls. “What she needed was a lot of reassurance that she could handle the kids.”

With the help of the caseworker, Anne and her husband, Raymond, devised behavioral charts to identify a few things that they wanted their sons to do, such as going to bed on time and getting along better. Each week, the boys were rewarded with stars and points for what they’d accomplished, or punished with an early bedtime or no TV when they did not follow family rules. Sometimes the caseworker would treat the boys to dinner or a day in the park for doing well. Eventually the worker was able to transfer this responsibility to the parents, especially Raymond, who was encouraged to spend more quality time with his sons.

The caseworker concentrated on helping both parents to build their self-esteem. Anne frequently called about problems at home. “She’d panic if the boys kept fighting or refused to listen to her,” the caseworker said. “I’d give her reassurance that it was O.K. for her to do certain things to discipline the kids, such as separating them from each other until things cooled down.”

Anne had been managing the boys on her own and needed more of her husband’s support, but his own lack of confidence had kept him uninvolved. “Raymond had a negative image of himself I think I was probably one of the first people who really listened to what he had to say. He cared a lot about his family; he just needed to know that he was needed and that he and his wife had to work together.”

The younger boys responded well to the behavioral charts. Sam still had a difficult time controlling his temper and getting along, but he worked hard and showed some improvement. When school reopened, tensions at home eased and several months after counseling ended, the family was still together and doing well. Arrangements were made with other agencies to coordinate additional social services that the family still needed, such as a special education program for Sam, welfare benefits, and supplemental employment assistance.

“When I began this case, I had some doubts as to whether I was going to be successful,” the counselor recalls. “Sam was acting out and fighting a lot. I came close to bringing him back to the hospital a few times. By working with Anne, Raymond, and the boys as a family, we managed to bring everyone together. What became critical to Sam’s progress was giving him the message that he wasn’t going to be sent away again, no matter what he did. He may have tested them by behaving badly; he just wanted to be sure they really wanted him around.”

 

 

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

Federal Support for IFPS

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of IFPS includes celebrating several key federal programs that provide support for IFPS.

The first is the Family Preservation and Support Services Program enacted by Congress in 1993. This federal program was later changed to Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF). The PSSF program was most recently reauthorized in 2011 for a period of five years. There are currently four categories of services that can be funded through PSSF:

  • Family preservation services
  • Family support services
  • Time-limited family reunification services
  • Adoption promotion and support services

For FY 2013 the total amount of funding was approximately $310.8 million. States are required to spend 20% for each of the four categories unless they provide a rationale for spending less. Administrative costs cannot exceed 10%. The following chart shows how states planned to allocate expenditures for the most recent fiscal year:

Promoting Safe and Stable Families FY 2013 Planned Expeditures

In addition to the four categories of funding, the PSSF program also provides funding to ensure that children in foster care are visited monthly by their caseworkers, grants to increase the well-being and permanency of children affected by substance abuse, and authorization for up to 10 new child welfare waiver demonstration projects per year (Title IV-E Waivers).

Federal child welfare waivers are important because they allow states more flexible use of federal funds to improve child welfare services. Funds that ordinarily would be used only for children in out-of-home placement can also be used for preventive services.

A Title IV-E Waiver is being used to expand IFPS (Homebuilders®) in Washington State. The centerpiece of Washington State’s demonstration project—implementing a differential response to allegations of child abuse or neglect—is intended to provide supports and services needed to keep children who are alleged to be abused or neglected safely in their own homes. One purpose of the project is to prevent and reduce out-of-home placements. The goals and purposes for differential response are closely tied to the expansion of IFPS.

According to the waiver application, past outcomes experienced by Washington State specific to Intensive Family Preservation Services using the Homebuilders® model include:

  • Appropriate connection of families to community resources;
  • Avoidance of new referrals to the department for Child Protective Services, Child and Family Welfare Services, or Family Response Services within one year of the most recent IFPS case closure by the department;
  • Prevention of placement or achievement of placement stabilization or reunification in 95 percent of cases;
  • Reduction in the length of stay in out-of-home placement, for reunification cases;
  • Reduction in level of risk factors as indicated by North Carolina Family Assessment Scale;
  • Prevention of reentry into out-of-home placement for over 75 percent of cases during the six months following termination of services.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services anticipates that expanding IFPS services by 10% will save $1 million during the five-year project.

The next time you contact your federal senator or congressional representatives, thank them for enacting PSSF and Title IV-E Waivers!

(Eileen West, ACF/Children’s Bureau, contributed information about the PSSF program.)

 

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

Protective Factors

In a February 2014 Issue Brief, the Child Welfare Information Gateway provides information and resources on protective factors.

According to this brief, protective factors are conditions or attributes of individuals, families, communities, or the larger society that mitigate risk and promote healthy development and well-being.

Put simply, they are the strengths that help to buffer and support families at risk. This definition could also describe IFPS services, indicating that IFPS and protective factors are interrelated.

Protective factors build on a family’s strengths, just as IFPS does. Here are the five key protective factors, as developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy:

  • Parental Resilience
  • Social Connections
  • Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development
  • Concrete Support in Times of Need
  • Social-Emotional Competence of Children

Now, let’s see if there is a corollary for these 5 factors in IFPS services:

  • Parental Resilience: IFPS emphasizes home-based services focusing on developing parental coping abilities so that children can safely remain in their homes.
  • Social Connections: IFPS is a brief service so it is important to link families to social and community connections that will provide long-term support for the family.
  • Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: IFPS therapists devote considerable time to teaching skills to parents that are based on the child’s age and development.
  • Concrete Support in Times of Need: One of the earliest and most consistent findings of IFPS research is the impact of concrete services on successful outcomes.
  • Social-Emotional Competence of Children: IFPS views children as integral members of the family who are included in planning and receiving services, and whose increased social and emotional well-being are critical in keeping families together.

Research on protective factors shows a subset that are are of particular interest to IFPS services because they have the strongest empirical support as shown in the following chart:

Protective Factors with the Strongest Evidence

The following are definitions for some of the individual protective factors:

  • Selfregulation skills refer to ability to manage or control emotions and behaviors, which can include anger management, character, long‐term self‐control, and emotional intelligence.
  • Relational skills refer to ability to form positive bonds and connections (e.g., social competence, being caring, forming prosocial relationships) and interpersonal skills (e.g., communication skills and conflict‐resolution skills).
  • Problemsolving skills refer to adaptive functioning skills and ability to solve problems.

Self‐regulation skills, relational skills, and problem‐solving skills are related to positive outcomes such as resiliency, having supportive friends, positive academic performance, improved cognitive functioning, and better social skills. They are also related to reductions in post‐traumatic stress disorder, stress, anxiety, depression, and delinquency.

Now, share how you develop protective factors with your IFPS families!

 

To view the Issue Brief on Protective Factors, visit:
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue_briefs/protective_factors.cfm
To view the research on Protective Factors, see:
(PDF, 512, Kb) http://www.dsgonline.com/acyf/PF_Research_Brief.pdf
Here’s a creative portrayal of protective factors and definitions:
http://www.whatmakesyourfamilystrong.org/Social—Emotional-Competence-of-Children.html

 

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

Featured IFPS Program: Tennessee

(Tennessee is the fifth state in our series of featured IFPS programs. See more at State Profiles.)

Tennessee was one of the first states to implement IFPS statewide. After discontinuing IFPS for a time, Tennessee is now again considering statewide implementation. All eyes are on a federally-funded pilot project that is testing IFPS with families involved in substance abuse. The project is also a collaborative that includes mental health, substance abuse, and child welfare.

1. How long has your state offered IFPS? Share about the history of IFPS in your state.

Ours is a partnership of a state mental health and substance abuse authority, state child welfare, community-based mental health center, and nonprofit research organization. The partnership began in 2012 when we applied for a collaborative grant with the Administration for Children and Families.

2. Why does your state/agency offer IFPS?

We had previous experience with IFPS as a statewide service designed to keep children safely and successfully in their homes rather than in state custody. A grant opportunity became available that allowed us to test the IFPS model on a smaller scale and evaluate its efficiency in families where parental substance abuse is an issue.

3. What qualities do you want to see in providers of IFPS, both at the agency and at the therapist level?

We look for a culturally competent team of master’s level clinical staff that is comfortable being family focused and values “family” as a necessary contributor to children’s wellbeing. Staff must be open to IFPS values and competencies, and have a passion for direct service delivery. Keeping children safe and making a positive difference for them and their families must be staff’s top priority.

4. What qualities do you look for in an IFPS therapist?

The data have shown that families are more hopeful after experiencing IFPS. There is some decay after six to 12 months, but families still remain more hopeful than at baseline. Families indicate appreciation to their therapist for new skills and connections. Families also report a more positive attitude around child welfare since IFPS.

5. How do you measure success of IFPS services? How successful are IFPS services in your state?

We examine the extent to which we have been able to reduce entry into custody, as well as re-entry reductions for re-unification cases. We are further collecting data on increased social and emotional development of children and families using the North Carolina Family Assessment Scales.

6. What advice and resources can you share with other states that want to establish a strong IFPS program?

Contact the National Family Preservation Network (NFPN) for guidance. They will work with you in determining how to establish a strong IFPS program. Their IFPS Toolkit, available on the NFPN website, is also very useful, as are other site resources.

Contact:
Dr. Edwina Chappell
Principal Investigator
TIES Project

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

Assessment and Exit Instrument Tools for IFPS

The National Family Preservation Network recently released a research study that included findings from assessment tools and exit instruments.

The North Carolina Family Assessment Scale (NCFAS) was originally designed for use with a statewide IFPS program in North Carolina. It includes 5 domains that measure family functioning: Environment, Parental Capabilities, Family Interaction, Safety, and Child Well-Being.

The tool has been proven reliable and valid with dozens of IFPS programs. A later version of this tool, the NCFAS-G, includes the original 5 domains plus 3 additional domains of Social/Community Life, Self-Sufficiency, and Health. Initial reliability and validity for the NCFAS-G was established with a differential response program.

Some IFPS agencies have been reluctant to use the NCFAS-G because it had not been tested with an IFPS program. The research study included use of the NCFAS-G with 2 IFPS programs and 1 differential response program. The following is a chart showing the reliability of the NCFAS-G as used with these programs:

Reliability of NCFAS-G using Chronbach’s Alpha as the Reliability Statistic:

NCFAS-G Domains Intake Closure
Environment .913 .922
Parental Capabilities .838 .869
Family Interaction .881 .903
Family Safety .862 .919
Child Well-Being .894 .869
Social / Community Life .833 .822
Self-Sufficiency .920 .887
Family Health .800 .813
N 181 166

By convention and agreement among psychometric researchers and scale developers, Chronbach’s alphas above 0.8 are considered to be strong, and alphas above 0.9 are considered to be very strong.

The NCFAS tools are designed to assist workers with assessing the family’s needs, prioritizing goals and services, developing a case plan, and measuring the family’s progress following delivery of services. The NCFAS tools are also used in evaluation and research. In the recent research study, the following chart shows the percentage of families functioning below baseline (adequate) at intake and at case closure:

NCFAS-G Domains Intake Closure
Environment 16% 6%
Parental Capabilities 30% 8%
Family Interactions 22% 8%
Family Safety 19% 6%
Child Well-Being 35% 12%
Social / Community Life 11% 4%
Self-Sufficiency 25% 13%
Family Health 28% 8%
N 184 172

The research study also included testing of exit instruments designed by NFPN to align questions for the worker and parent(s) which correspond in general with the NCFAS assessment tools. You will note from the examples in the following chart that when families completed services, caregiver responses at termination almost mirrored the responses of the worker whereas there was more disparity between caregiver and worker when the family did not complete services:

Proportion of Responses About “Neutral” and At or Below “Neutral”

 Proportion of Responses Above , At, or Below Neutral

To read the full research study, visit:
http://nfpn.org/reunification/reunification-research

For more information on the assessment tools, visit:
http://www.nfpn.org/assessment-tools

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

IFPS Nationwide Survey

1992_2014_ifps_reportsThe National Family Preservation (NFPN) has conducted nationwide surveys of Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) in 1994, 2007, 2011, and now 2014. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of IFPS (Homebuilders® model) so NFPN is publishing a special survey edition. Here are the highlights:

In the first nationwide survey of IFPS in 1994 a half-dozen states reported they had implemented the Homebuilders® model of IFPS on a statewide basis (75% or more of counties). Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, and Michigan have continuously provided IFPS while Tennessee and Louisiana discontinued IFPS for a period of time. Twenty years later 12 states responding to the survey have a statewide model of IFPS based on the Homebuilders® model.

  • The 12 exemplary states report that they serve 11,364 families annually.
  • Seven of the 12 exemplary states require 30 or more hours of initial training on IFPS while eight states require ongoing training.

What others have said about the Homebuilders® model of IFPS:

“Many people who argue for the removal of children see the damage which has been done by abusive or neglectful parents. I can understand that. However, they are not around to see the long-term damage to children that can result from acting hastily or unnecessarily to remove them from their families. They also do not see the enormous successes that have resulted from our family preservation efforts, even sometimes with families once thought to be beyond hope. We hear from many families (96 percent in the latest study) that family preservation is exactly what they needed to help them deal with their problems-and they would recommend it for other families.”

— Gerald Miller, Director, Michigan Department of Social Services, Detroit News, August 27, 1993.

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“It is a timeless model that encourages and supports the fundamental belief that all children need and deserve a family.”

— Douglas Nelson, Retired President and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation).

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“Family preservation services appeal to our better side. With their constant commitment to the strengths, not weaknesses, of families in trouble, they are proving that most families can learn to stay together, that people can change.”

— Bill Moyers, Families First, PBS documentary

Here’s a glimpse at the future of IFPS:

NFPN and the Institute for Family Development (IFD) are jointly developing an IFPS Repository. The website will serve as the electronic library for irreplaceable memorabilia and documents from the past, current documents that are critical to retaining and expanding the knowledge base of IFPS, and room for growth to add more documents in the future.

And, here’s the last word in honor of the 40th anniversary of IFPS:

The Homebuilders® model of IFPS services is the most important development in the history of services to families.

Demonstrating that the most challenging families can safely remain together, offering these families unlimited access to intensive services, treating them as partners, and anticipating that they can and will change in a brief period of time is an audacious undertaking.

And one that has withstood the test of time.

To view the complete IFPS Survey Report, visit:
http://nfpn.org/preservation/2014-ifps-survey

 

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director
National Family Preservation Network

What a Field Placement in IFPS Offers Students

A field placement with an Intensive Family Preservation Services agency gives students a unique experience in child welfare. The structure of IFPS interventions, including their intensity, can broaden, accelerate and integrate the student’s classroom learning.

The primary goal of an IFPS field placement is to learn how to provide short-term, intensive, home-based interventions with children and families. A major focus is learning and practicing interventions skills designed to help families resolve problems that put them at risk of disruption through placement of a child.

The field placement offers an opportunity for students to integrate their classroom learning. Theory, policy, and practice come together under the guidance of skilled IFPS agency staff. Students learn a variety of intervention skills that benefit their capabilities as clinicians whether in family preservation or other practice areas.

Skills learned in an IFPS field placement include:

  • Engaging clients quickly
  • Motivating clients to participate in counseling
  • Assessing and utilizing client strengths
  • Assessing family/individual functioning levels and problem areas
  • Assessing the risk of child abuse, neglect, family violence and self-harm
  • Structuring the family situation to prevent violence
  • Defusing potentially violent situations
  • Providing support through active listening, affirmations, availability and resource mobilization
  • Teaching skills using cognitive behavioral techniques including: communication, parenting, mood management, behavioral management, problem solving, decision making, negotiation, and assertiveness
  • Developing therapist self-care strategies and skills

Not all students will find a field placement in IFPS a good fit for them. Students benefit from a complete understanding of the benefits and demands of a field placement in IFPS before selecting the placement. Some characteristics are associated with greater student success and satisfaction in an IFPS field placement:

  • Commitment to the goals, values and strategies of family preservation services.
  • A belief that, in most cases, the best place for children is with their natural families and that IFPS can help achieve that goal while keeping children and other family members safe.
  • Seeing the value of working with clients as colleagues and believing that people are capable of making significant changes in their behavior.
  • Openness to diversity.
  • Flexibility and availability to see families outside normal field placement days, including evenings and weekends.
  • An understanding of the need to be available to clients in crisis situations, either in person or by phone.

 

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Posted by Peg Marckworth

Federal Family Preservation Legislation

Family Preservation Guide CoverAs part of the 40th anniversary celebration of IFPS, we are looking at federal involvement in family preservation. Advocates of IFPS were instrumental in helping to pass the first federal law on this issue, the Family Preservation and Support Services Program, enacted in 1993.

Information for this post is taken from the publication Making Strategic Use of the Family Preservation and Support Services Program: A Guide for Planning. The Guide, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the Children’s Defense Fund, was published in 1994 with readers encouraged to reproduce and disseminate it. The following are some of the highlights from the Guide:

The goals of the Family Preservation and Support Services Program are to:

  • Protect children’s safety.
  • Strengthen families’ ability to promote their children’s healthy
    development.
  • Contribute to the development of a more responsive, collaborative, family-centered child and family service system.

The program authorizes resources for states to meet these goals
through broad-based and extended planning and through the strategic expansion of family preservation and family support services. Approximately $900 million will be distributed to states over the course of five years (FY 1994 through FY 1998) for planning and program expansion.

The legislation recognizes that family preservation and family support are not “stand-alone” services; they are part of a larger child and family service system. They stress that planning and implementation should not be limited to expansion of family preservation and family support services, but should seek to apply the principles underlying these services—family-centered, collaborative, and communitybased service delivery—to all child and family services. Family preservation and family support services should be expanded in ways that encourage, facilitate, and leverage improvements in all child-serving systems.

Here’s how the legislation described family preservation services:

  • Often offered to families as an alternative to their children’s placement in out-of-home care.
  • Designed to maintain children safely in their homes and prevent the unnecessary separation of families.
  • Characterized by small caseloads for workers, short duration of services, 24-hour-a-day availability of staff, and the provision of services primarily in the home or in another environment familiar to the family.

The federal government intended that the family preservation and support legislation would serve as a catalyst for improving service delivery. States were required to develop plans with five critical steps:

  1. Determining in detail the needs of children and families as well as state and local capacity to respond to these needs.
  2. Envisioning a more effective service system—one that responds earlier, more comprehensively and with greater flexibility—with the aim of strengthening families and promoting healthy child development.
  3. Developing policy and programmatic strategies that will enable states and communities to build this more effective system.
  4. Identifying all of the resources—federal, state, and local, public and private—available for child and family services.
  5. Determining how best to allocate (or reallocate) those resources so that they support state and local reform agendas.

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network

Featured IFPS Program: Missouri

(Missouri is the fourth in our series of featured IFPS programs. See more at State Profiles.)

1.How long has your state offered IFPS? Share about the history of IFPS in your state.

IFPS State Administrator:
The first family preservation service program began in Missouri in 1997. The first IFPS project began in 1988 with the primary focus on abused and neglected children in imminent risk of removal. In 1989, four additional projects began providing services, including multiple county projects in both rural and urban county areas. By October of 1995, IFPS programs were operating in 35 project sites covering all of Missouri’s 115 counties, and the City of St. Louis. The name of the program was changed to Intensive In-Home Services (IIS) in 1998. Today, IIS services are available to all 45 circuits within the State of Missouri.
IFPS Provider:
Gillis began providing Family Preservation Services/IIS in Jackson County in 1991 with five In-Home Specialists. We worked in partnership with the Children’s Division Services and The Children’s Place to provide short-term Intensive In-Home crisis services to families with one or more children at risk of removal. During this time we have provided support to the Children’s Division in efforts to educate the community and referral sources regarding the program. In 1997, when The Children’s Place relinquished their contract, Gillis added five Specialists and one and a half supervisors to their staff. In 1998 the Children’s Division changed the program name to Intensive In-Home Service and Gillis was awarded that contract. Gillis has maintained the IIS Jackson County contract and was awarded the most recent contract in 2012 for 12 IIS Specialists.

2. Why does your state/agency offer IFPS?

IFPS State Administrator:
IFPS has helped reduce the number of children who enter out of home care by keeping kids safely at home. In fiscal year 2013, 77.1% of children receiving IFPS services avoided out of home care. This allows children to remain safely with their families and allows staff to have smaller caseloads. In addition, families who have had IFPS intervention are less likely to have their children come into care up to 12 months after intervention than a family at risk who did not have IFPS intervention. IFPS has also drastically reduced the occurrence of child abuse and neglect during IFPS intervention and at 3, 6, and 12 months after intervention. The program has helped to save a substantial amount of money. The cost of the IFPS program is minimal compared to the direct cost and staff time incurred by the Children’s Division.
IFPS Provider:
To help children remain safely with their families and to prevent them from going into the foster care system. We also believe that all families have the ability to make change. We love preventative programs!

3. What qualities do you want to see in providers of IFPS, both at the agency and at the therapist level?

IFPS State Administrator:
The provider must have an overriding goal of protection of children through the enhancement of family capabilities. Safety of all family members is the concern of Intensive In-home Services; however, safety of the child is the primary consideration. The provider’s services must focus on assisting in crisis management and restoring the family to an acceptable level of functioning.The therapist shall provide services designed to keep children safe from abuse and neglect and improve family permanency.
IFPS Provider:
We look for someone who is compassionate, hopeful, caring, strength-based, non-judgmental, and flexible. The person must have the ability to be assertive, with solid engagement skills, and a belief that families have the ability to change, We look for therapists who can teach others, with crisis management, and have the ability to understand the importance of self-care.

4. What qualities do you look for in an IFPS therapist?

IFPS State Administrator:
Families have problem-solving and other life skills, focusing on assisting in crisis management and the specific issues placing the child at risk of removal from their home. In addition, the IFPS program helps families establish linkages with formal and informal community services.
IFPS Provider:
We see families who are more hopeful about their family unit and their future, have fewer feelings of stress, more organized households, better communication skills, better use of appropriate discipline, utilize supports/supportive services, better understanding of their children’s needs, and children are now in an environment that is healthier and safer.

5. How do you measure success of IFPS services? How successful are IFPS services in your state?

IFPS State Administrator:
The overarching goal of IIS is to protect children through the enhancement of family capabilities. As a result, the agency tracks the number of substantiated reports three months following the IIS intervention. According to the IIS contract, 85% of families who have received IIS intervention shall not have confirmed child abuse/neglect within the first three months following the completion of IIS intervention. For the last three years, contractors and state staff have exceeded this requirement with only .12% having a substantiated report within 3 months for SFY10 and SFY11, and .06% for SFY13. This data demonstrates success of the program mission to protect children from abuse and neglect. The data also supports the efficacy of the program to teach families skills to improve family functioning and allow them to remain intact.
IFPS Provider:
Self-reports from our families, feedback from CD worker, observations of positive change, skills taught being put to use, decreased risk factors /, family has increased resources/supports, intact families at our 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups, and no more substantiated hotline reports.

6. What advice and resources can you share with other states that want to establish a strong IFPS program?

IFPS State Administrator:
I would encourage states to develop an IFPS program. The program has proven effective in preventing children from entering foster care. Missouri is willing to share information regarding our model, lessons learned, and data which may be beneficial to states interested in developing an IFPS program.
IFPS Provider:
Get to know the local community resources, network, partner with Children’s Division, get to know resources within your own agency to help families, , be strengths-based. Remember your supervisor and your co-workers are there to be a support, and remember self-care…this can be a stressful position.

Contacts:
IFPS State Administrator
Crystal Wilson (E-mail: Crystal.L.Wilson@dss.mo.gov)
Program Development Specialist
Children’s Division – Central Office

IFPS Provider
Rachel Hodson
Director of In-Home Services
Gillis

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Posted by Priscilla Martens, Executive Director, National Family Preservation Network