The agency collaborates with other providers or conducts community outreach to identify families who are potentially in need of service and inform them about the program.

Interpretation: The agency can partner with other agencies or organizations where families seek services, such as hospitals and health departments, or provide outreach directly to families. When the agency provides outreach directly to families, efforts should be respectful, non-intrusive, non-stigmatizing, and provided in places where families in the community naturally congregate, such as schools, libraries, and faith-based institutions. Specific strategies can include: telephone calls, mailings, information packets, brochures, announcements at community programs and events, and drop-in visits to the home.

PA-CFD 1.02

Families are engaged to participate in the program in a timely manner.

Interpretation: The agency should seek to identify families as early as possible, as appropriate to the type of service offered.

QUICK JUMP TO


	PURPOSE: Families participating in Child and Family Development and Support Services delivered through strong community partnerships gain new competencies, improve child health and well-being, improve family functioning, and make family-community connections.

RELATED FILES

NA Request.doc
PA_CFD Template.doc
PA-CFD Reference List.pdf


	FAMILY Two or more people who consider themselves family and who assume obligations, functions, and responsibilities generally essential to healthy family life. Child care and child socialization, income support, long-term care, and other caregiving are among the functions of family life. The definition of "family" will rest with an individual's indication of who plays a family member role, including current or former foster family, adoptive family, extended family members, fictive kin, or significant others. Organizations that believe family is the central constellation in a child's life, and that family attachments are of primary importance for human development, will strive to work with professional staff to develop a common understanding of "family."


	SERVICE One or more organization-operated programs or activities that have a common general objective and deploy the organization's material and human resources in a planned and systematic manner. An organization that publicly promotes or identifies itself in writing as offering a service, is licensed to deliver a service, assigns personnel and/or space to a service, or allocates financial resources to a service is considered to offer that service.


	COMMUNITY A specific group of people living in the same locality and who may share a common culture, values, and norms. Communities can also be defined by race, religion, ethnicity, age, occupation, political status, tribal affiliation, interest in particular problems or outcomes, or other common bonds. The term "community" encompasses worksites, schools, tribes, residential neighborhoods, business districts, recreational areas, and health and human service sites.


	OUTREACH Contact initiated by a provider to identify persons in need of services, to provide information to them about services and benefits, and to encourage the use of appropriate services.


	PROGRAM A system of services offered by an organization. For example, an organization providing a mental health service may offer several mental health programs to different populations, e.g., a mental health program for adolescent teens. The word "program" can be used interchangeably with the word "service" or to describe specific programs.