A unique family engagement process, Family Involvement Strategies (FIS) builds on family strengths to develop care and safety plans.
Trained staff coordinate and facilitate meetings where families develop plans to address child welfare, child maltreatment, juvenile corrections and children's mental health concerns.
Services are provided in MN Prairie County Alliance, Olmsted, Rice, Freeborn, Fillmore, Houston, Wabasha, and Goodhue Counties.
FIS is described as both an evidence-informed practice and a transformational strategy, with the fundamental goal of engaging the family network in critical decisions when their children come to the attention of the child welfare and/or juvenile corrections system.
Originating from an indigenous, anti-racist, anti-oppressive framework, FIS facilitates an integrative planning process where family systems, community members and child welfare agency professionals’ partner to develop plans for the safety, permanency and well-being of children. This approach recognizes that families are embedded within an ecological context of extended relations, friendships, neighborhoods and communities, and that long-term solutions are more effective when they are constructed by the families within their own social network.
Recognizing the inherent imbalance of power between the statutory agency and the family, 11 counties partner with FSR to provide trained, non-case carrying coordinators that are independent of the social services case. The coordinator brings together the family group and the service providers to create and carry out plans to safeguard children and other family members.
Early identification and engagement of family members assists in keeping children safe while maintaining family connections. FIS addresses over-representation of children of color in the child welfare system and the disparate outcomes for these children. This is accomplished by finding and engaging their “family” network to actively participate in making decisions regarding the safety, permanency and well-being needs of the children within the context of their culture.
When people are faced with difficult times and are in need of help, support, and comfort, who do they look to? What if there was a way to bring those connections together to offer support at times when they don’t imagine it to be a possibility?
FIS believes in the power of bringing family together to help children and families ignite and amplify their voices where they may have once been silenced. FIS trusts that families know one another best and are committed to the child’s long-term success and thus, are in a position to develop better and more sustainable plans than the agency alone.
