MODULE 3: Hiring and Supporting Family/Parent Partners
Strategies:
1) Determine organizational readiness to hire and support Family/Parent Partners.
Module 3
Residential programs that are successful with implementing the role of Family/Parent Partners have done the groundwork for preparing their agencies for hiring Family/Parent Partners. It is essential for the organization to embrace successful family engagement and to develop full partnerships with families as a core value. Beginning with a strategic or action plan that endorses a paradigm shift from provider-driven to family-driven is a critical foundation in laying the groundwork for organizational readiness to hire and support Family/Parent Partners. To further the plan, programs embrace the principle of families as full partners in their children’s care and move the focus from “treating” the child in a residential program to viewing the child in the context of the family and providing supports for the entire family in their home and community. Ensuring that families are meaningfully involved as full partners who are fully engaged in their child’s treatment and support process is known to lead to better outcomes.
Joe Ford, Senior Vice President of Hathaway-Sycamores shares important learning from hiring Family/Parent Partners
Organizational readiness for employing Family/Parent Partners
Pat Hunt, Executive Director of FREDLA, and Joe Anne Hust, for the Building Bridges Initiative discuss organizational readiness as it pertains to incorporating Family/Parent Partners
Preparing organizations (especially staff) for working with Family/Parent Partners
Pat Hunt, Executive Director of FREDLA, discusses the importance of having “courageous conversations” about bias toward families as part of organizational readiness
2) Be clear about the role of Family/Parent Partner and prepare program staff to work in partnership with them.
Be aware that staff may be cautious about hiring parents and working side by side with them. Clarify the role of the Family/Parent Partner and do the pre-work before Family/Parent Partners are employed. The presence of Family/Parent Partners can change the agency culture and send a clear message to staff that parents are valued. Make staff aware that Family/Parent Partners will utilize their own stories to create learning opportunities and will provide a reality check – a “Will this really work for this family?” perspective. They may challenge assumptions, biases, and stigma. Convey to the program staff that the goal of having Family/Parent Partners is that they become part of the program’s treatment and support philosophy. The Family/Parent Partner role creates a conduit between the residential program and the family home and family culture. The Family/Parent Partner will instill a sense of urgency in the work, reminding everyone that every day a youth spends out of their home is another day away from living in a permanent forever home. Programs attempting to shift the paradigm from provider-driven to family-driven will want to provide staff with education and supervision to support them through this major cultural change process.
Cynthia Williams, Lead Family Support Partner at Hathaway-Sycamores discusses the characteristics of impactful Family/Peer Partners
Joe Ford, Senior Vice President of Hathaway-Sycamores shares insights that led to and are important about Family/Parent Partners
3) Have organizational leadership create strategic alliances within family/professional teams at all administrative levels. Examples include pairing a clinical residential director and a Family/Parent Partner supervisor for supervision of clinical staff, pairing clinical staff and Family/Parent Partners for training, and pairing direct-care and/or clinical staff and Family/Parent Partners for first pre-admission visits to homes.2 These types of pairings create opportunities for staff to experience effective professional and Family/Parent Partner partnerships at all levels of an organization, often creating staff champions within the organization for the full integration of Family/Parent Partners.
Joe Ford, Senior Vice President of Hathaway-Sycamores describes how Family/Parent Partners were critical to achieving culture change within the organization
Joe Ford, Senior Vice President of Hathaway-Sycamores, underscores how impactful Family/Parent Partners are for an organization
4) Ensure that the residential organization/program has a strong partnership with a local and/or statewide family-run organization and/or official family network. This will set the foundation for all organization/program Family/Parent Partners to be connected to experienced Family/Parent Partners for expertise and support on a regular basis. Many organizations have benefited from having a formal agreement or contract with a family-run organization to coach and/or co-supervise the Family/Parent Partner role. These associations and networks provide resources for Family/Parent Partners and allow them to stay informed of current trends that are specific to family needs. Typical advantages of connecting Family/Parent Partners to family-run organizations or networks include:
- connections with other Family/Parent Partners in the same or different settings
- information about new laws
- access to local and national resources
- training and mentoring opportunities
- identification of awareness and anti-stigma efforts
- access to materials targeted to Family/Parent Partners
- ability to join systems advocacy efforts
- information about national efforts toward certification
- connection to national family movements.
How Providers can best support Family/Parent Partners working in Residential
Pat Hunt, Executive Director of FREDLA, discusses the importance of flexibility and understanding as it pertains to the experiences and obligations of Family/Parent Partners.
5) Consider creative possibilities for funding Family/Parent Partner Roles. BBI often hears from programs that funding for Family/Parent Partner roles is a primary consideration. It may take some creative thinking to finance these positions. Grant funding is sometimes the first step, but grant funding is often temporary. In states with a longer history of funding these positions, Medicaid funding has been employed. Some states have Title IV-E Waiver funding available. With the right research, funding sources can be secured. Note that many providers, including family-run organizations, use blended funding. Programs find it helpful to consider the return on investment (ROI) strategy ⎯ in other words, employing Family/Parent Partners is a necessary cost of doing business.
Funding the Role of Family/Parent Partner
Pat Hunt, Executive Director of FREDLA, discusses ideas for sustainably funding the Family/Peer Partner role
Additional Strategies:
Consider the human resources issues to address prior to hiring Family/Parent Partners. Providers that hire Family/Parent Partners stress the importance of having human resources issues addressed prior to employing Family/Parent Partners. These issues include:
- the essential prerequisite of lived experience caring for a child with mental-health, behavioral, and/or emotional challenges. In job announcements/advertisements, lived experience can substitute for educational requirements.
- a job description clearly defining the role, duties and responsibilities, and training needed for the role.
- non-traditional recruitment activities that will focus on identifying parents who have lived experience navigating child-serving systems and, for this position, a child who has received residential interventions.
- the ability to offer Family/Parent Partner training or to partner with a family-run organization to offer the training.
- an experienced Family/Parent Partner to supervise the role (this could be in collaboration with a family-run organization), as well as a defined and strong connection to a senior leader who is committed to family-driven care and who has the ability to remove barriers when they occur.
- a clearly defined career ladder that does not require parents to move to a non-peer position (not requiring lived experience) to advance in the agency.[1]
Hire Family/Peer Partners as full employees. It is recommended that residential programs hire Family/Parent Partners as full employees who are fully integrated into the organization. If the Family/Parent Partner is not an employee of the organization, their role may be limited to providing peer-to-peer support. This will limit their ability to effectively influence positive culture change and improve all staff skills and program practices needed for successfully engaging, partnering with, supporting, and offering culturally responsive skill building, as needed, for families served.
Be prepared to implement traditional and non-traditional recruitment strategies. Residential programs recruiting and hiring Family/Parent Partners in states where the role of Family/Parent Partner is more commonplace may be able to recruit for the position in traditional ways. In most instances, however, they will need to fill the position through non-traditional recruiting, typically word of mouth. The natural place to start is with families whose child is receiving or has received a residential intervention, as these parents have the most important qualification, lived experience. It is also helpful to partner with a family-run organization to recruit for the role. A recruitment flyer or advertisement for a Family/Parent Partner might look like the example below:
We are recruiting! If the following statement describes you …
“I am the parent of a child with emotional or behavioral challenges and have learned to navigate the system with my own child. I am able to use my own lived experience to support another parent and provide hope and guidance to other families through similar challenging circumstances. I stand committed to ensuring that other parents have a voice in their child’s care and are active participants in the healing process. Having experienced the stigma and isolation that raising a child with mental health challenges brings, I am able to connect other parents to resources and supports that build on their strengths and interests.”
… please contact XXX Child & Family Services for an interview for a [full- or part-] time position.
Note the prerequisite of lived experience as described above with the hiring of the Family/Parent Partner position. This is not a staff person that you are trying to mold into this position, but a parent who genuinely has navigated services with their own child, preferably at the same level of service, e.g., with a residential program.
Family/Parent Partners and residential staff ideally reflect the diversity of the youth and families served. Recruit and hire staff who culturally and represent and speak the same languages as the families served. It is critical to provide services and supports that consider each family’s cultural, ethnic, and racial background; sexual orientation; gender identity; and family traditions. Family/Parent Partners can connect with diverse abilities and diverse communities; families value the peer relationships as well as expertise. Family/Parent Partners from the same culture provide culturally comfortable supports and a safe environment.
Ensure that Family/Parent Partners begin engaging families pre residential admission. Through effective outreach and partnerships, Family/Parent Partners can prepare families for the experience of a residential intervention. They can first meet with the family in their home and community, welcome the family, create open dialogue by establishing rapport and thoroughly answering all questions, and create an opportunity for families to talk to a peer who has walked in their shoes. Family/Parent Partners can also welcome a family to the residential program with other staff. They can provide a tour, introduce the family to staff, and support the family on the first day, which can be hard for both the family and the youth. It is extremely helpful to provide a follow-up call on the youth’s first night away from home, for example, and to provide a contact number for the family to call. Click here to access the BBI Tip sheets for Families Considering a Residential Program to learn more.
During residential interventions, Family/Parent Partners can empower family members to self-advocate. Family/Parent Partners can support family members in effectively voicing their needs during Child and Family Team meetings. They can continually check in with the family to ensure that the program is meeting their needs. They can also support families in improving and/or developing new skills to be successful with their child at home, at their home school, and in the community. Family/Parent Partners work with families to develop or improve skills and to connect to community supports; this work is often done in partnership with other residential staff.
It is essential that Family/Parent Partners work in the community with families. It is critical to orient all work that happens with a residential intervention to a youth and family’s long-term success at home, in school, and in the community. As part of the residential team, Family/Parent Partners often meet with to identify real-life needs and to provide support in the family’s own environment, often in partnership with clinical and/or direct-care staff. Family/Parent Partners can establish relationships with formal and informal community resources during residential interventions, which can benefit the family by creating community connections that support the family post residential discharge.
Family/Parent Partners can play a critical role as change agents. Beyond providing peer support, the role of Family/Parent Partners sends a clear message to all program staff that families are valued and necessary partners in the work being done. It is important for leadership to take every opportunity to include Family/Parent Partners as fully engaged partners. Create opportunities for Family/Parent Partners to be included on leadership or management teams and boards of directors. Take opportunities to highlight their work and promote their work in newsletters and social media. Many programs have included Family/Parent Partners as trainers in new staff orientations and as co-trainers in clinical training, as they represent families’ perspectives. Their role as change agents and their ability to teach staff to operationalize family-driven care in their daily practices is often an unexpected benefit of hiring Family/Parent Partners.
Creatively support the role of Family/Parent Partners. Support and self-care are essential in the “work is my life and life is my work” role of Family/Parent Partners. Organizations can carefully consider early on how to manage this, as many Family/Parent Partners may still be experiencing challenges at home. Be prepared for occasional challenges in understanding the issues that Family/Parent Partners face, and do not assume that Family/Parent Partners’ intuitional skills will be enough. Without proper training, coaching, and supervision, and a focus on self-care, burnout can happen quickly. A connection to a family-run organization is helpful to strengthen that support. Look to avoid hierarchies with staff who are not ready to work with families, and always work to ensure that Family/Parent Partners are included as equals. It is important to ensure that Family/Parent Partners are not unintentionally put in a role model mode; rather, it is critical to emphasize their role in a peer-to-peer support mode. There are many reasons Family/Parent Partners add value to residential programs and interventions. They can engage parents in a way that others cannot because of their personal experience. They are hired because of their personal experience, but it is critical to ensure there is a balance between accommodations and accountability.
Module 3 Hiring and Supporting Family Partners
[1] Issues Brief: Family-to-Family Peer Support: Models and Evaluation: Outcomes Roundtable for Children and Families. http://www.fredla.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Issue-Brief_F2FPS.pdf
[2] Hust, J.A. (2015). Strategies to assist parent peer support implementation in the wraparound workforce. The TA Telescope, 1 (2) https://www.fredla.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Wraparound-and-Parent-Peer-Support.pdf