What is it?

Family engagement is a family-centered, strength-based approach to establishing and maintaining family relationships and accomplishing change together. At the practice level, this includes setting goals, developing case plans, making joint decisions, and working with families to ensure their children's safety, permanency, and well-being. It encompasses the inclusion of children and youth (when age-appropriate) and adult family members in case planning and case activities. It also involves supporting the development of relationships between resource families and biological families. Family engagement means including families as key stakeholders and advisors in policy development, service design, and program and service evaluation on an organizational or system level. 

Why does it matter?

Montana's Child and Family Services Division use family engagement to bring together family, friends, child protection specialists, and service providers to share concerns, knowledge, and skills. They can be used throughout the child protective process as a way to prevent the removal of a child from the home, after the child is in foster care, to document family progress in improving the home setting, and help identify permanent placements for a child. 

Practice strategies that work

Tips for successful engagement

1. Be familiar with who you are working with and what is happening in the case. Prepare before every meeting by reviewing the file/referral/notes.  
2. Be open to learning new things: Ask what the child or youth likes and then ask them to teach you about it (Pokémon – music- card game-video game).  
3. Engage parents to build a relationship. Assure them that you are an advocate for the safety and well-being of their child at all times. 
4. Identify and highlight accomplishments, positive change, and what's working at every interaction. 
5. Offering parents the option to invite someone they trust to join in meetings is an often-overlooked option that can comfort a parent and help them engage.  
6. Keep an open mind toward all families no matter what you think you "know" about the case or if you've experienced a similar circumstance in the past. Everyone deserves our best effort.  
7. Approach everyone as though they have a deep capacity for change and growth. They do—even incarcerated parents or in a residential substance abuse facility.  
8. Practice humility with every family's culture and dynamic. It can be tempting to make assumptions, but engagement is how we learn about them as unique individuals within a family system.  
9. Be clear about the system, the process, and the potential outcomes. Confirm understanding about expectations and timelines with everyone involved.  
10. Be reliable with all members of the biological and resource families and their support networks. Communicate what they can expect from you, and then deliver it. 

Effective caseworker and agency behaviors for family engagement include the following:

• Meeting the family where they are 
• Planning with the family, not for the family 
• Focusing on client skills and strengths 
• Setting mutually acceptable goals 
• Providing services that families view as relevant and beneficial 
• Spending sufficient time with families to provide essential services