This course offers both an introduction to the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework and concrete examples to help enhance a parent’s protective factors within everyday practice with children and families. Strengthening Families, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), is a research-informed approach to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. By being intentional when engaging families and embedding the five protective factors within programs and daily work, families are empowered, and children thrive.
The five Protective Factors are: Parental Resilience, Social Connections, Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development, Concrete Support in Times of Need, and Social and Emotional Competence of Children.
By the end of this training, participants will:
- Have a enhanced empathy and appreciation of how the five protective factors work to strengthen parents and reinforce optimal child development
- Discover ways to engage parents not only by addressing and working to reduce their risk factors, but by discovering and building their strengths to increase their parenting skills
- Be able to apply tangible tools within their everyday work with families to build protective factors
- Recognize and articulate the value of focusing not just on a family’s risk factors, but also their strengths
- Promote the value of including parents in the decisions that affect their lives and incorporating parents' intos opinions in agency programming