How could parenting assessment increase family engagement?  For many parents, the first point of contact to our Family Resource Centers are our Parent/Child Interactive (PCI) Groups.  Assessing parenting quality as part of the PCI Groups deepens staff understanding of the dyads’ parent-child interaction, which in turn points to specific areas for parenting improvement.  Providing assessment informs specific and detailed support and leads families involved in our PCI Play Groups to understand the potential value of services offered through the Family Resource Centers, which leads to increased parent engagement.  A very important, but unexpected observation.

Guest Post by:

Theresa Zighera, Evaluation Officer, First 5 San Francisco

Nick Chandler, Masters Level Intern, UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare

San Francisco Family Resource Centers

For the San Francisco Family Resource Centers (SF FRC), our Parent/Child Interactive Play Groups are a very common entry point for families and comprise 39% of all visits to the SF FRCs.  If a family participates in a PCI Play Group, it’s quite likely they will participate in other FRC activities.  In other words, PCI Play Groups serve as a gateway to engage families in all of our other SF FRC services.  

Within the SF FRCs, the KIPS parenting assessment tool is a natural fit and proves particularly beneficial within the PCI Groups because both are play–based, focused on the parent/child relationship, and serve families on a consistent basis over an extended period of time.  These services previously lacked a process for communicating, measuring and tracking parent skill development. 

Early anecdotal comments from SF FRC leadership indicate that when KIPS is incorporated into PCI Groups, it can play an important role in guiding families to use additional SF FRC resources.

The feedback from the KIPS observation identified some specific areas for growth. It had a tremendous impact on the mother. She saw it as a sign that she needed support with her child and began accessing multiple services at our center. She has been a consistent attendee of parent groups and workshops. – Family Resource Center Staff

PCI Groups are for children 0-1,1-3 and 3-5 years old.  Parents/caregivers accompany their children to group sessions.  Through facilitated play, parents learn skills that encourage their children’s development.  PCI Groups are only one of a standard set of eight essential services at SF FRCs which afford a multitude of opportunities to work with families over time in areas related to parenting skills, child school readiness, and the parent/child relationship.  Launched in 2009, the Family Resource Center Initiative established a coordinated, city-wide system of family support services in San Francisco. The SF FRC Initiative pooled funding from First 5 San Francisco; the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families; and the San Francisco Human Services Agency. In doing so, the Initiative strategically aligned funding resources from these agencies, allowing the city to ensure efficient and consistent programming and maximize the funding impact. 

The SF FRC vision is to strengthen families and communities to ensure healthy childhoods for San Francisco’s children and youth by:

1) Providing families with access to services and opportunities;

2) Building parent knowledge and skills;

3) Providing intensive support services for families in need; and 

4) Promoting community development. 

All 25 funded SF FRCs offer a standard set of eight essential services:

• Parent education classes;

• Ongoing support groups for fathers, grandparents, mothers, and parents;

• Fun parent/child interactive activities and family events;

• Monthly educational and informational workshops;

• Opportunities to build leadership skills and strengthen the community;

• One-on-one support as identified by individual family need such as food, housing, employment; child care, and health care; and

• Services conducted in coordination with Child Welfare, such as supervised visitation in support of family reunification goals.

In FY2010/11, the SF FRC Initiative served almost 10,000 adults and over 3,000 children/youth ages birth through 17.  Approximately 15 percent of parent/caregivers who participated in SF FRC activities have some connection to the child welfare system. The populations served by the SF FRC Initiative are very diverse.  One in three parent/caregivers reported limited English fluency.  “Given the demographics of the neighborhoods and special populations targeted for service, participants’ race/ethnicity and primary language reflect the diversity in the City as a whole but have higher representation from Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino and African American ethnic groups as well as higher proportions of non-English primary languages. As shown in the figure below, the majority of parent/caregivers served by the Initiative were either Hispanic/Latino (40 percent) or Asian/Pacific Islander (31 percent). Nineteen percent of parent/caregivers were African American and eight percent were Caucasian.” 

(San Francisco Family Resource Center Initiative Year 2 Evaluation: FY10/11, p. 17).  

Parent/Caregivers by Race/Ethnicity Across All FRCs, FY10/11 (N=8,423)

Because the families served are highly diverse, the staff working in the Centers reflects this diversity. To increase confidence and success, we have supplemented the online KIPS training  with an introductory general session on assessments which includes peer translation and support. 

Since the SF FRCs offer 1) a set of standard services 2) to a highly diverse population, the observation that introducing an parenting assessment increases family engagement is very encouraging.   We look forward to seeing if the impression from different Centers translates into significant results in our upcoming evaluation analyses.  Learn more about the SF FRC Initiative and how they incorporated KIPS into their services in success story.

San Francisco Family Resource Center Initiative

Experience Assessing Parenting in Supervised Visitation Services

Observational parenting assessment as been implemented in 22 Family Resource Centers in San Francisco.  Integrating parenting assessment into supervised visitation services for families involved with Child Welfare

1) provides objective evidence of parents’ strengths and needs, 

2) supports the development of very specific visitation goals developed in partnership with the family which provides greater structure and purpose to subsequent visits, and

3) promotes clear and concrete communication about progress to the family and Child Welfare case worker that informs determination of families’ readiness for reunification.