Strengthening Families: building key protective factors for families
By focusing on the five universal family strengths identified in the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework, community leaders and service providers can better engage, support, and partner with parents in order to achieve the best outcomes for kids. – Center for Study of Social Policy, Strengthening Families
Strengthening Families, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), is a research-informed, strength-based approach that helps families, programs, and communities increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. The framework is centered around helping families build five Protective Factors:
- Parent resilience
- Social connections
- Knowledge of parenting and child development
- Concrete support
- Social and emotional competence of children
These key protective factors work on the program level where workers can better serve families through small but significant changes to daily practice. Across the United States, the framework has been implemented in over 30 states. The HOPE National Resource Center is a proud partner of the Strengthening Families National Network.
Connecting the HOPE and Strengthening Families frameworks
The Strengthening Families framework and the five key Protective Factors significantly overlap with the HOPE framework and the four key types of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) we describe as the Four Building Blocks of HOPE:
- Safe and supportive relationships
- Safe, stable, equitable environments
- Opportunities for engagement
- Opportunities for emotional growth
The Strengthening Families and HOPE frameworks can be used together to promote the healthy development and well-being of children, youth, parents, and families, and reduce risk factors. When parents are strong and supported in their Protective Factors, they can provide their children with positive childhood experiences.
Programs might work with parents, children, or both, depending on the services they provide in their community. They can use HOPE or Strengthening Families as the primary framework and pull in resources from the other framework as needed. Both frameworks help providers to use strength-based practices to improve positive outcomes for children, youth, and families.
HOPE and Strengthening Families for systems-impacted families
New, free online course
The HOPE National Resource Center partnered with CSSP and National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) to release a free, online course, HOPE and Strengthening Families for Systems-Impacted Families. This interactive experience specifically focuses on professionals who work with children, youth, and families who have been impacted by the child welfare, juvenile justice, or justice system.
We encourage anyone who works with families who have been impacted by these systems to complete this course.
Four new resources
In addition to the new course, we created four new resources that guide programs on how to combine the practice of the HOPE and Strengthening Families frameworks:
- Utilizing HOPE and Strengthening Families within systems
- Promoting resilience for systems-impacted families
- How HOPE and Strengthening Families work to help you and your family thrive
- HOPE and Strengthening Families-Informed coaching guide
These resources can be downloaded on our website.
Utilizing HOPE and Strengthening Families within systems
This resource shares how to practice the HOPE Framework and Strengthening Families together. It shares practical steps in incorporating both frameworks in your day-to-day practices and within your overall organization. Through this resource, you will learn the importance of examining policies that may be creating unintended barriers and how to engage with people with lived experience.
Promoting resilience for systems-impacted families
This resource shares how each Building Block of HOPE connects to one or more of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors and ways to promote each pairing with systems-impacted youth and families. The Building Blocks and Protective Factors help create opportunities for families to break intergenerational cycles of systems-involvement.
How HOPE and Strengthening Families work to help you and your family thrive
This resource is designed to help families understand how and why a program uses HOPE and Strengthening Families in its practice. Using tips detailed in this resource, families can increase their children’s access to the Four Building Blocks of HOPE and build their own Protective Factors.
A HOPE and Strengthening Families-Informed Coaching Guide
This guide is designed to help supervisors coach staff toward more consistent use of the HOPE and Strengthening Families frameworks. This worksheet should be used as a part of regular supervision sessions. It can stand alone, or its content can be incorporated within existing agency supervision tools.
These resources were created in partnership with CSSP’s and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NAACHO).
This project was supported by grant #6 NU38OT000306-05-05 awarded to the National Association of County and City Health Officials and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
