Family Engagement Trends Across the Youth Service Field

This post was written by Katy White, MANY's Director of Research and Innovation. Across the youth services field, there is a growing conversation of how and when to engage families as part of supporting the youth that come in our doors. This is a topic that often carries strong emotions for those involved, depending on the unique relationship the youth has with his or her family. Whether in a foster care, mental health, juvenile justice, runaway/homeless youth, or mentoring setting, the family plays a role. Over the last several years, MANY has been active in engaging youth service providers in discussions on how best family engagement can occur to positively affect youth outcomes. As we all continue to examine practices from across these sectors, which trends and findings could have a positive impact on youth across the field? Within the runaway and homeless youth service field, family engagement can take many different forms, depending on the youth and the reason(s) they are homeless. There is a growing trend towards building permanent connections with caring adults who can help youth make a successful transition to being self-sufficient, not just those in the immediate family system. Within the federal funding, both the Family Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) Transitional Living Program and the Basic Center Program have specific outcomes related to how services will help youth to build those permanent connections with caring adults. A recently released study on runaway and homeless youth found that youth who identify themselves as having positive social relationships, especially with caring adults, are better equipped to handle difficult and traumatic experiences.  The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice (NCMHJJ) also offers a wide array of resources for youth and families who come in contact with the juvenile justice system. In 2004, with support from the MacArthur Foundation, NCMHJJ started the Models for Change initiative that focused on improving the juvenile justice system, particularly to include better family engagement. Four states were selected to serve as core states for this initiative: Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Illinois, and Washington. While each state addressed challenges specific to their community and juvenile justice system, several practices were used across all models. This included the development of guidebooks that were targeted at helping families understand the juvenile justice system and how to navigate the process. In both Washington and Illinois, families and youth who had already been through the juvenile justice system were invited to offer guidance and support to new families who were overwhelmed by the process. Through these interventions, families came out feeling that they were an advocate for their youth, rather than simply a bystander in the proceedings. A family’s perception of their role is critical in determining how they respond to and engage with the services being offered to their youth. Finding the right balance of service and engagement is a challenge well known by those in the mentoring field. Drs. Renee Spencer and Antoinette Basualdo-Delmonico recently released a focus group study on family involvement in mentoring which suggests that both family and staff perceptions of the family can have a significant impact on the quality of the mentoring relationship.  As part of their research, they found that there are three different ways that families are often involved in the mentoring relationship:

1. Involved. At this level, families are informed of program policies and procedures and how they are to interact with the mentor and the mentoring staff. There are often very clear boundaries about what the mentoring staff can assist the family with. This may mean referring the family to other community resources to meet needs which are unrelated to the match.
2. Engaged and Served. In this instance, mentoring staff will work directly with the family to better understand the family dynamics, and the role that those dynamics play in the mentoring relationship. Staff may go beyond simply referring families to resources with the notion that stronger families lead to stronger match relationships.
3. Collaborate. Here, families are seen as the expert on their youth and what will best benefit the youth. There is great value placed on the knowledge of the parent, and the parent is seen as a partner in the match relationship. This often means that the mentor and parent are communicating regularly and jointly making decisions that impact the youth.

The article concludes by stating the importance of common agreement and understanding among mentoring staff and families regarding the level of engagement expected as part of the mentoring relationship. When all involved are in working towards the same goal of involvement, there are fewer opportunities for confusion and conflict, which can lead to stronger outcomes for the youth. As explored in these articles, strong family engagement (however family is defined) plays a key role in supporting youth as they develop into self-sufficient adults. For that reason, MANY identified family/caregiver engagement as one of our key focus areas for 2015. We will continue to learn from researchers, practitioners, and our network about the different faces of family engagement, as well as effective ways of sharing best practices among these sectors, in order to improve youth services as a whole.