Moving Beyond Family Support: Empowering Families

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Moving Beyond Family SupportEmpowering Families

• NTAC Topical Conference
• Tampa, Florida
• April 28, 2004

This project is supported by the U.S. Department
of Education, Office of Special Education
Programs (OSEP). Opinions expressed herein are
those of the authors and do not necessarily
represent the position of the U.S. Department of
Education.
The National Technical Assistance Consortium for
Children and Young Adults Who Are Deaf-Blind
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OVERVIEW

• Explain difference between support and
  empowerment
• Explain the various roles of Family Support
  Personnel
• Increase understanding of an empowerment approach
  to family support
• Share strategies and examples for enabling and
  empowering families
• Discussion and activity to illustrate and check
  for understanding

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DEFINITIONS

• Support to bear the weight of , especially from
  below to hold in position prevent from falling,
  sinking or slipping to keep (ones spirits, for
  example) from falling during stress lend
  strength to to provide for or maintain by
  supplying with money or other necessities
• Empower to invest with legal power, authorize
  to enable or permit
• Enable to supply with the means, knowledge, or
  opportunity to be or do something to make
  feasible or possible to give legal power,
  capacity or sanction to permit

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WHAT DOES EMPOWERMENT MEAN?

• . . . empowerment has no agreed-upon
  definition . . . Rather, the term has been used,
  often loosely, to capture a family of somewhat
  related meanings (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990)
• Empowerment is a little bit like obscenity you
  have trouble defining it, but you know it when
  you see it (Rappaport, 1985)

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WHAT DOES EMPOWERMENT MEAN?

• Definitions emphasize
• Mastery and control as outcomes
• Processes and experiences that create or produce
  empowerment
• Intra-personal and inter-personal behaviors that
  moderate and mediate mastery and control
• An interactional relationship between the
  processes and the outcomes of empowering
  experiences
• That empowerment efforts are guided by a certain
  set of ideological beliefs

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WHY EMPOWERMENT?

• Parents are the experts on their children and
  need to know/believe this and acquire skills to
  let others know
• Support only takes you so far
• Dont want to build dependency on professionals
• Affirming experience for families
• Its what families need to be able to make it
  through the times/challenges ahead

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EMPOWERMENT PHILOSOPHY

• The Guiding Principles of an empowering
  philosophy are
• 1. All people have existing strengths and
  capabilities as well as the capacity to become
  more competent.
• 2. The failure of a person to display
  competence is not due to deficits within a
  person, but rather to the failure of social
  systems to provide or create opportunities for
  competencies to be displayed or acquired.
• 3. In situations where existing capabilities
  need to be strengthened or new
  competencies need to be learned, they are best
  learned through experiences that lead people
  to make self-attributions about their
  capabilities to influence important life events.

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• Now that weve talked about what empowerment is.
• How do we achieve it?

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FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES

• Teacher/Therapist
• Find ways to incorporate instruction/therapy into
  normal activities and daily routines
• Identify child and parents strengths and use
  them to address identified needs
• Empathetic Listener
• Utilize both active and reflective listening
  skills
• Promote family/support personnel partnerships

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FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES

• Consultant
• Provide information and opinions in response
  to the familys request(s)
• Provide knowledge and experiences so that
  familys network of support can be better
  informed and able to support the family
• Resource
• Act as a natural clearinghouse of information
  regarding community resources
• Assure that family support personnel are
  knowledgeable about local/state/national
  resources and know how to assist families in
  accessing appropriate resources

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FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES

• Enabler
• Create opportunities for the family to become
  skilled at obtaining resources and support
• Family support personnel need to act in the role
  of empowerer not rescuer
• Mobilizer
• Help families connect with others (families
  and/or individuals) that can provide new or
  alternative supports and resources
• Using a MAPPING strategy can help bring key
  players together

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FAMILY SUPPORT PERSONNEL ROLES

• Mediator
• Promote cooperation and instill an atmosphere of
  collaboration
• Time-limited, with the purpose of setting up
  positive, task-oriented and mutually reinforcing
  interactions between families and large systems
  if negative experiences have occurred
• Advocate
• Provide families with knowledge and skills
  necessary to protect parent and child rights,
  negotiate effectively with policymakers, and
  create opportunities to influence the
  establishment of policies on behalf of children
  and families
• Important to act in a proactive way

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EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR EMPOWERING FAMILIES

• Promote positive and proactive interactions with
  families
• Offer help in response to family-identified needs
• Offer help that is normative
• Offer suggestions that provide the family with
  immediate success in mobilizing resources
• Promote the use of the familys natural support
  networks as principal ways of meeting needs
• Adapted from Guidelines for Family
  Empowerment in Enabling and Empowering Families
  Principles Guidelines
• for Practice (1988) Dunst, Carl Trivette,
  Carol and Deal, Angela Brookline Books,
  Cambridge, MA p 94-97.

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EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR EMPOWERING FAMILIES

• Promote a sense of cooperation and joint
  responsibility for meeting family needs
• Permit the family to decide to accept or reject
  help
• Permit help to be reciprocated and offer
  opportunities to do so
• Promote independence and the acquisition of
  skills and behaviors necessary to meet family
  needs
• Promote the family members ability to see
  themselves as an active agent responsible for
  behavior change
• Adapted from Guidelines for Family
  Empowerment in Enabling and Empowering Families
  Principles Guidelines
• for Practice (1988) Dunst, Carl Trivette,
  Carol and Deal, Angela Brookline Books,
  Cambridge, MA p 94-97.

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PROMOTE POSITVE AND PROACTIVE INTERACTIONS WITH
FAMILIES

• Taking a proactive stance holds the assertion
  that people are already competent or have the
  capacity to become competent
• Develops a trusting relationship with families
• Process of empowerment can begin right away in
  our work with families
• Initiates an attitude that will go far

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OFFER HELP IN RESPONSE TOFAMILY- IDENTIFIED NEEDS

• Often a difficult one for us
• IFSP is a family-driven document
• Families of infants and toddlers may be at a
  different place than services providers

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OFFER HELP THAT IS NORMATIVE

• Stays in line with the familys appraisal of the
  situation
• Benefits exceed the efforts/cost to solve the
  problem/need
• Culturally sensitive
• Builds on inherent strengths

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OFFER SUGGESTIONS THAT PROVIDE THE FAMILY WITH
IMMEDIATE SUCCESS IN MOBILIZING RESOURCES

• Assists in fostering positive partnerships
• Begin with an immediate need
• Demonstrate success
• Take small steps
• Build on positive experiences

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PROMOTE THE USE OF THE FAMILYS NATURAL SUPPORT
NETWORKS AS PRINCIPAL WAYS OF MEETING NEEDS

• Uses what the family is comfortable with
• Family assessment is part of IFSP
• May need to train staff in family assessment
  and/or family systems theory

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PROMOTE A SENSE OF COOPERATION AND JOINT
RESPONSIBILITY FOR MEETING FAMILY NEEDS

• Multi-disciplinary approach is a major component
  of early intervention services
• Parents are seen as equal partners and recognized
  as knowing their child best
• Training for family empowerment can and should
  begin early
• Emphasis of team concept provides a model for
  family members to utilize throughout educational
  and life planning
• Helps assure that service providers are viewed as
  partners, rather than someone sent to do and
  fix everything

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PERMIT THE FAMILY TO DECIDE TO ACCEPT OR REJECT
HELP

• Instills family-driven concept
• Gives family feeling that they do have some
  control in their life
• Ultimately families do know what is best for
  their child/family

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PERMIT HELP TO BE RECIPROCATED AND OFFER
OPPORTUNITIES TO DO SO

• Allows families to show their gratitude
• Provides chance to do something positive for
  others
• Reinforces capabilities as parents of a child
  with special needs
• Beneficial to DB project and other families

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PROMOTE INDEPENDENCE AND THE ACQUISITION OF
SKILLS AND BEHAVIORS NECESSARY TO MEET FAMILY
NEEDS

• Enabling experiences are opportunities (naturally
  occurring or created) that allow for competence
  to be displayed or learned
• A slow, but necessary process
• Will only lead to strong, more cable families
  empowered

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PROMOTE THE FAMILY MEMBERS ABILITY TO SEE
THEMSELVES AS AN ACTIVE AGENTS RESPONSIBLE F0R
BEHAVIOR CHANGE

• Reinforces partnership/team concept
• Provide opportunities for training for
  empowerment (e.g. advance preparation,
  de-briefing, thanking parents)
• Supports and encourages empowerment as locus of
  control shifts from service provider to family
  member
• Reinforces family attitudes of adequacy and
  confidence in their own abilities to effect
  positive change for their child
• A person is empowered when he or she has
  attributed changes in behavior to his or her own
  actions, in order to acquire the sense of control
  necessary to manage family affairs

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• Enabling and Empowering Families Principals and
  Guidelines for Practice (1988) by Carl Dunst,
  PhD., Carol Trivette, MA, and Angela Deal, MSW
• Supporting and Strengthening Families Methods,
  Strategies and Practices (1994) by Carl J. Dunst,
  Carol M. Trivette, and Angela G. Deal

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Linking Family Support and Early Childhood
  Programs/Issues, Experiences, Opportunities by
  Mary Larner, PhD.
• Families, Professionals, and Exceptionality
  Collaborating for Empowerment by Ann Turnbull and
  H. Rutherford Turnbull
• California Association of Family Empowerment
  Centers www.cafec.org
• Family Empowerment www.familyempowerment.org
• The Florida Partnership for Parent Involvement
  http//cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/dares/fcpi/statement.html
  
• Parents Helping Parents www.php.com
• National Resource Center for Family Centered
  Practice www.uiowa.edu/nrcfcp/index.html

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SUMMING IT ALL UP!

• IFSP requirements guarantee that we look at
  things from a family perspective first this is
  a shift from what some service providers may
  have been taught (or what some may believe)
• Building dependent relationships is harmful to
  families in the long run, regardless of our good
  intentions
• TA providers arent usually the ones who have
  ongoing contact with families and/or know them
  best we need to establish positive
  collaborative relationships with the entities
  that do

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• REMEMBER!
• It is not simply a matter of whether family needs
  are met, but the manner in which needs are met
  that results in family empowerment.

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THE END!