Programs

Making Proud Choices! A Safer Sex Approach to STDs, Teen Pregnancy, and HIV Prevention is an eight-module curriculum that is designed to provide young adolescents with the knowledge, confidence, and skills necessary to reduce their risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV, and pregnancy by abstaining from sex or using condoms if they choose to have sex. It is based on cognitive-behavioral theories, focus groups, and experience working with youth. Making Proud Choices! is an adaptation and extension of the original Be Proud! Be Responsible! curriculum in that it integrates STD, HIV, and pregnancy prevention.

The Making Proud Choices! curriculum is designed to not only increase knowledge and perception of personal vulnerability, but also create positive attitudes towards condom use, teach skills, and build confidence in ability to use condoms.

Signposts for Building Better Behaviour is a program that helps families prevent or manage the difficult behaviour of children aged 3-16 who have a developmental delay or an intellectual disability. Trained facilitators offer the program to families in groups, face-to-face with individuals, via telephone, or as a self-directed program.

The Signposts program involves the provision of written and videotaped materials to assist these families. Five parenting skills development areas are addressed:

• Module 1 – Measuring your child's behaviour
• Module 2 – Systematic use of daily interactions
• Module 3 – Replacing difficult behaviour with useful behaviour
• Module 4 – Planning for better behaviour
• Module 5 – Developing more skills in your child

Three additional modules include:

• Introduction
• Your family as a team
• Dealing with stress in the family

Safe Families for Children (SFFC) serves parents of any age by supporting them through temporary hosting of children, mentoring, and friendship through a network of approved volunteer families. Minor children ages 0 to 18 are eligible for hosting with the consent of the parent, and some host families are willing to host a single parent and child together in their home. In order to qualify for services, a parent must be experiencing a crisis such as homelessness, substance abuse, mental health issues, domestic violence, medical problems, incarceration, parental stress, or another situation that makes it difficult for the parent to adequately and safely care for their child. The parent must be willing to comply with requirements and sign the necessary consent forms allowing the Host Family to care for the child, must be willing to maintain contact with the child and work for the child to be returned home, and the crisis presented should be able to be resolved in a reasonable amount of time (less than six months) unless there are extenuating circumstances.

Family Hui is a peer-led, trauma-informed positive parenting program for parents with at least one child from birth to five years old. The program is designed to build a community of support among parents. The primary content of the program is conveyed through an initial 12-week period of weekly meetings, and participants are encouraged to continue their hui relationships thereafter (i.e., through joint activities among some or all participants). The program is built around the five protective factors identified by Strengthening Families as well as responding to potential impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Alternative Behavior Choices (ABC) is a 16-52 week manualized psychoeducational program (i.e., a program that educates about the psychology pertaining to the clients' thoughts, feeling, and behaviors) for voluntary as well as court-ordered clients who have perpetrated emotional and/or physical abuse upon their intimate partners. The curriculum follows the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, consisting of 16 core lessons, based on the latest risk factor research. ABC takes into account the needs of individual clients based on an assessment protocol that uses reliable and validated instruments, as well as principles of Motivational Interviewing. The program contains 16 core lessons, with accompanying workbook exercises. Clients who attend more than the minimum 16 sessions are given additional workbook exercises for weeks 18-34, and for weeks 35-52.

Reducing the Risk (RTR): Building Skills to Prevent Pregnancy, STD & HIV is a 16-session pregnancy and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention curriculum designed to help high school age youth delay the initiation of sex or increase the use of protection against pregnancy and STD/HIV if they choose to have sex. RTR addresses skills such as risk assessment, communication, decision making, planning, refusal strategies and delay tactics. The program is based upon several interrelated theoretical models: Social Learning Theory, Social Inoculation Theory, and Cognitive-Behavior Theory. The program content strives to be medically accurate, inclusive to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, and trauma-informed.

Love Notes 4.0 builds assets and appeals to young people’s aspirations. It offers young people new conceptual frameworks to help them make informed decisions instead of sliding into unplanned choices that can negatively impact their lives.

Its theory of change hypothesizes that interventions must build young people’s skills for cultivating healthy relationships, selves, and sexual behaviors: planning and pacing relationships and sex, self-efficacy and resilience around relationships, proven communication skills, and understanding the benefits of deciding when it comes to family formation.

In 13 engaging lessons, participants use a strengths-based approach to discover, often for the first time, how to make wise choices about partners, sex, relationships, pregnancy, and more.

The Kinship Navigator Program - Family Connections Grantee Model provides staff positions (Kinship Navigators) to assist kinship caregivers with understanding, navigating, and accessing the system of out-of-home care supports and services for children. Kinship navigators provide flexible and responsive services to kinship families based on family needs. Kinship navigators initially provide caregivers with information, referrals, and advocacy services. Navigators also assist caregivers in identifying and removing barriers to service receipt; accessing benefits for which they are eligible; accessing legal services; and utilizing existing community resources and support systems (such as health, financial, legal services, support groups, training, and emergency funds). The program model is designed to empower families to support and advocate for one another and therefore, foster interdependence and a natural support system. Through kinship navigation services, the program model seeks to support kinship families and contribute to the increased safety, permanency, and well-being of youth in formal (i.e., placed in legal custody of government and placed into kinship care by the child welfare system) and informal (i.e., arrangements made by parents and other family members without child welfare or juvenile court involvement) kinship care.

The Kinship Navigator Program – Arizona provides staff positions (Kinship Navigators) to assist kinship caregivers with understanding, navigating, and accessing the system of out-of-home care supports and services for children. Kinship navigators provide flexible and responsive services to kinship families based on family needs. Kinship navigators initially provide caregivers with information, referrals, and advocacy services. Navigators also assist caregivers in identifying and removing barriers to service receipt; accessing benefits for which they are eligible; accessing legal services; and utilizing existing community resources and support systems (such as health, financial, legal services, support groups, training, and emergency funds). The program model is designed to empower families to support and advocate for one another and therefore, foster interdependence and a natural support system. Through kinship navigation services, the program model seeks to support kinship families and contribute to the increased safety, permanency, and well-being of youth in formal (i.e., placed in legal custody of government and placed into kinship care by the child welfare system) and informal (i.e., arrangements made by parents and other family members without child welfare or juvenile court involvement) kinship care.

The WPW RP Approach is designed to be a culturally inclusive parent-child coaching model for resource, adoptive, and biological parents who are raising children with trauma-exposed, childhood experiences that result in emotional and behavioral disturbances. The WPW RP Approach teaches parents that the LifeSpace children are born into provides the training ground for the child's developmental journey in which the brain itself is learning and encoding "what we do, how we do it, and why we do it." The WPW RP Approach first illuminates the relational intersection between the traumatized child's developing brain/body and the parent's challenging job to identify and heal the "stuck" places in attachment, self-regulation, interpersonal relationships, and compliance to the social contract of rules, limits, and boundaries. Secondly, the WPW RP Approach provides parents with strategic methods and tools to help children "surrender to belonging" and to rediscover their innate desire to connect, fit, and belong within the relational LifeSpace the parents inhabit.

The Therapeutic Supervised Visitation Program provides specialized and intensive services to vulnerable children and their families: children in foster care and children involved in high-risk custody and visitation cases in family court proceedings. Therapeutic supervised visitation services are designed to help parents who cannot have unsupervised access to their children due to a history of child physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, or mental illness. Rather than eliminating contact between a noncustodial parent and child, supervised visitation creates a one-on-one supportive setting where the relationship can safely continue and be strengthened while pending legal issues are addressed by the child protective and court systems. The program allows visiting parents to spend time with their children in the presence of a Master's-level clinician or a Masters of Social Work intern supervised by licensed clinicians. Families receive support from skilled clinicians to strengthen or repair their relationship with their children. Supervised visitation is intended to be a temporary remedy with most parents moving toward less restrictive or unsupervised visits with their child whenever possible. When a family is transitioning to unsupervised visits, The Therapeutic Supervised Visitation Program provides a neutral place for the safe transfer of children during unsupervised visits when there are restrictions placed on the contact between parents.

The Just Beginning (JB) Program is a structured visitation program designed specifically for young noncustodial fathers, particularly those in juvenile or criminal justice facilities with the goals of building and strengthening the relationship between father and child. JB can also be used with young incarcerated mothers. JB programming and visitation can also been done virtually. JB aims to enhance the quality of interactions, foster secure attachments, and maintain strong bonds with the child as well as encourage communication with the child's primary caregiver. The program consists of five 60-90 minutes sessions, during which a JB-certified facilitator helps the father to master four key skills:

• Noticing the child's signals and cues
• Following the child's lead
• Talking to the child
• Encouraging and praising the child

Embedded within each session is a visit between the parent and the child during which the father practices these skills.