Programs

Intensive Alternative Family Treatment (IAFT®) is a specialized family type, therapeutic treatment foster care service provided to children/youth and their families in a community setting founded on (14) IAFT® Practice Elements. Individuals with a need for this level of care often present with challenging behaviors; need an out-of-home placement; will benefit from clinically focused treatment to avoid placement in a higher level of care; and/or are making a planned transition from a more restrictive setting. The desired outcome is to exhibit improved individual and family system functioning upon successful return to a natural living home/least restrictive setting after treatment. IAFT® provides a trauma-informed, structured, therapeutic, and supervised home environment to decrease problem behaviors and improve the level of functioning for children/youth and their families or natural supports. Through continuous quality improvement activities and quarterly compliance reviews, fidelity to the IAFT model and its 14 practice elements is monitored.

Ending The Game: A Sex Trafficking Intervention Curriculum (ETG) is a survivor-written curriculum designed to reduce feelings of attachment by sex trafficking victims to a trafficker and/or the lifestyle of commercial sexual exploitation. ETG aims to educate and empower victims of commercial sexual exploitation by providing victims with a structure and framework to assist in uncovering harmful psychological coercion, explore the sequence of commonly used mind control techniques used by traffickers, and empower ETG participants to acquire skills to “End The Game.”

AIM HI (An Individualized Mental Health Intervention for Autism) is a caregiver and child skill-building intervention and therapist training model for children 5 to 13 years old with autism receiving mental health services.

The AIM HI protocol includes identifying functional patterns of a target behavior and actively teaching (through modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and in-home practice) positive alternative skills for children and complementary strategies for caregivers to structure the environment to reduce the likelihood of interfering behaviors, as well as promote the child’s use of alternative skills (e.g., communication skills, emotion regulation, self-help skills).

AIM HI components include:

• Mental health therapists teach caregivers to identify functional patterns in their child’s behaviors and collaborate to develop a behavior plan
• Therapists actively teach positive alternative skills to children and complementary strategies to the caregiver to structure the environment to reduce the likelihood of interfering behaviors, as well as promote the child’s use of alternative skills
• Strategies designed to assist in adaptation of psychotherapy sessions to maximize engagement and skill building among children with autism:
• Inclusion of the child’s special interests in treatment sessions
• Maximization of in-session predictability through the use of schedules and visuals
• Delivery within the context of mental health/psychotherapy services with adaptation for telehealth, as needed

The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) is designed to end intergenerational poverty in Central Harlem and lead the way for other long-distressed communities nationwide and around the world to do the same.

HCZ aims to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty with on-the-ground, all-around programming that builds up opportunities for children and families to thrive in school, work, and life. From early childhood, education, and career programs to community outreach and wellness initiatives, HCZ hopes to open pathways to mobility and prosperity.

HCZ’s mission centers around the belief that the most powerful way to fight poverty is to invest in every opportunity for people to rise above it. From education and employment to housing and healthy living, HCZ aims to do whatever it takes so that Central Harlem’s children, families, and communities can live up to their promising futures.

Communities That Care (CTC) guides communities through a five-phase change process. Using prevention science as its base, CTC is designed to promote healthy youth development, improve youth outcomes, and reduce problem behaviors. The CTC process begins with a youth survey to identify a community’s risks and strengths. Based on these data, CTC helps communities select and implement tested & effective prevention programs and policies. CTC also helps amplify programs already working. Bach-Harrison provides surveys, analysis, and reporting services to communities. Implementing CTC involves steering a coalition through the 5 Phases of CTC, guided by the Milestones and Benchmarks.

Magnolia Place Community Initiative (MCI) uses a network approach to leverage resilience and community assets to combat the entrenched problems that children and families face. MCI believes the connections between the people and institutions of all sectors can drive positive community change. The research continues to build evidence for the importance of building, strengthening, and maintaining connections in the service of data-driven collective action that continuously monitors progress. MCI network tends to the number, variety, and depth of those connections in the 500-block catchment area.

MCI builds, tends to, and measures their network so that it:

• Holds itself accountable to child and family well-being outcomes
• Continuously uses, collects, analyzes, disseminates, and refines data for action
• Brings together a variety of partners from different sectors and creates spaces for community participation and leadership
• Fosters distributive leadership so that all network actors (agencies and residents) can have an equal opportunity to plan for and take collective action

Best Start is First 5 LA’s strategy to advance community-identified solutions in 14 geographic areas/5 regions in Los Angeles County. These geographic areas have faced historic disenfranchisement and oppression through political, economic, social, and environmental factors that aggravate chronic family stressors such as violence and poverty. Despite these realities, these are sites of great strength and resiliency. For decades, champions and community leaders, along with parents of young children, have been working to create better futures for their children. Best Start is designed to help transform the systems supporting young children and their families, in a way that places the voice and experience of parents and residents in the center in developing solutions. These communities are reimagining what is possible through Best Start through the engagement of networks for collective advocacy, learning together, and building best practices to improve outcomes for children.

The Second Step Early Learning program for PreK children is a universal, classroom-based program designed to increase children’s school-readiness and decrease problem behaviors by promoting social-emotional competence and self-regulation. It offers direct instruction and teaches skills that strengthen students’ ability to learn, have empathy, manage emotions, and solve problems.

The Second Step Early Learning program provides developmentally appropriate explicit skills instruction, offers content and media that is age-appropriate, and is designed to engage students in developing skills to enhance their emotion management, situational awareness, and school readiness.

The TASC's Family Recovery & Reunification Program (FRRP) seeks to improve the outcomes of substance abusing parents compared to those parents receiving traditional alcohol and other drug abuse (AODA) services from child welfare workers through the assignment of a Recovery Coach. Recovery Coaches are responsible for providing individualized case management services and aggressive outreach supportive of client substance abuse recovery and reunification with their children when appropriate.

The Second Step Child Protection Unit program for PreK and Elementary school children is a universal, classroom-based program designed to develop students' knowledge and skills for protecting themselves from unsafe and abusive situations, both in and out of the classroom.

The Second Step Child Protection Unit program aims to provide developmentally appropriate explicit skills instruction, offering content and media that is designed to be age-appropriate and engage students in learning how to recognize, refuse, and report unsafe situations and inappropriate touching.

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) Small Group Model for Adults is an approach designed to heal psychological trauma, relieve stress, reduce symptoms of chronic illness, and increase resilience. Working in small groups of 8–10 people, facilitators teach a variety of self-care techniques drawn from the world’s healing traditions as well as modern medicine to help participants learn to move through emotions and experience their own capacity for self-healing. Trained facilitators guide the experience, helping participants discover their own answers.

Triple P Online is one of the interventions within the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program® System, which is designed to help parents learn strategies to promote social competence and self-regulation in children as well as decrease problem behavior. There are eight (1-hour) online modules that can be completed using a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Parents are guided to apply simple strategies in specific situations to encourage positive behavior and to prevent and respond assertively when problems occur. Triple P Online is interactive and provides videos, activities, and built-in motivational support including reminder emails and in-program encouragement to reinforce skill development and enhance parental engagement and completion. Parents may download their workbook, a variety of parent tipsheets, and other material for future reference.

Triple P Online was adapted from the in-person version of Triple P - Positive Parenting Program® - Level 4 Standard Triple P.