Policy Briefs

Family Support Systems

Brief No. 23 — Home Visiting: Strengthening Families by Promoting Parenting Success

Childhood success begins with parenting at its best.  Home visiting can strengthen families facing parenting and child-rearing challenges.  As an early childhood intervention, home visiting aims to enhance parenting, link at-risk families to community resources, and help prepare young children for kindergarten.  Several home visiting models can produce considerable positive effects and net savings over the long term.  To enable home visiting programs to consistently deliver services with the highest quality, governments, the research community, and other community sectors must increase their support.  In return, home visiting agencies must take steps to strengthen outcomes. Read full brief»

Brief No. 20 — Strengthening Grandfamilies through Respite Care

Children do well when raised by grandparents and other relatives, especially when these caregivers can receive temporary relief, or respite services.  Respite care is an essential part of strengthening “grandfamilies.”  Together with other support services, respite contributes to the long-term stability and wellbeing of all members of grandfamilies.  This brief from the Family Strengthening Policy Center provides information on existing respite care systems and gaps, outlines promising practices, and suggests recommendations for federal and state policy makers and the human services community. Read full brief»

Brief No. 19 — Family Literacy

Parent involvement in literacy instruction has a significant, positive impact on children's reading acquisition that is equivalent to a 10-point score gain on literacy tests. In addition, 43 percent of adults were employed after participating in family literacy programs, compared with 14 percent prior to enrolling. This brief explores the promises and challenges faced by family literacy programs, and the policy priorities that will enable these programs to continue their work strengthening low-income families with children. Read full brief»

Brief No. 16 — State and Local Government Family Strengthening Initiatives

Welfare reform and the need for efficiency in a tight fiscal environment have led state and local governments across the country to develop infrastructure and initiatives that provide crucial support for low-income families. This brief highlights examples of family strengthening initiatives implemented by state and local policymakers to foster interagency coordination, level the economic playing field for families, focus government resources, and foster cross-sector collaboration. Read full brief»

Brief No. 14 — Community Health Workers: Closing Gaps in Families’ Health Resources

Low-income families face multiple barriers to accessing timely, quality services necessary to protect their health. A wide variety of organizations have found community health workers can play a critical role in helping families manage their health. Read full brief»

Brief No. 13 — Sustaining and Growing Father Involvement for Low-Income Children

This brief highlights father-involvement programs that seek to sustain and grow low-income, nonresidential fathers’ emotional and financial involvement in their children’s lives.  It calls on policy makers to address disadvantaged fathers’ urgent needs, especially for employment-related services and a child support system that offers more than sanctions. Read full brief»

Brief No. 12 — Marriage and Relationship Education: Will It Reduce Poverty and Strengthen Families?

Data indicates a correlation – but not necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship – between child wellbeing, poverty and two-parent families with healthy relationships.  This brief reviews the emerging practice known as “marriage and relationship education” (MRE) and advocates for making family services available to all low-income families with children, regardless of marital status.  In this context, MRE programs would be part of a comprehensive approach to family-strengthening. Read full brief»

Brief No. 8 — Supporting Families with Incarcerated Parents

Our nation’s high rate of incarceration takes a heavy toll socially and economically on children, their families and communities. Supports are needed because they make communities more resilient to the effects of incarceration and serve to prevent negative outcomes for prisoners and their children. This brief examines risk and protective factors of children of incarcerated parents; intervention models, as well as state and federal initiatives to address this vulnerable and often invisible population. Read full brief»

Brief No. 6 — Family Strengthening in Youth Development

Out-of-school youth development programming is ripe with opportunities to strengthen families and engage families as equal partners with youth development staff.  This brief assesses how youth-serving programs involve parents as decision-makers in strengthening families and communities as well as presents strategies for how national organizations and initiatives serving youth can empower parents as partners in their work. Read full brief»

Brief No. 4 — Mentoring as a Family Strengthening Strategy

Mentoring programs are based on the idea that all children need caring adults in their lives.  This brief examines the following two questions: Can greater family engagement in traditional youth mentoring programs lead to better outcomes for mentored youth?  and Can mentoring principles be applied to help connect isolated families to valuable resources and supports to achieve stability and self-sufficiency? The Center’s analysis is based on Q & A’s with youth and family-serving professionals and case studies of programs that apply principles of mentoring to serve vulnerable families and youth, It suggests that youth mentoring that involves parents or caregivers and emerging family mentoring approaches hold significant promise for strengthening disadvantaged families with minor children. Read full brief»

Brief No. 3 — Parental Involvement in Education

Family and community involvement that is linked to student learning has a greater effect on achievement than more general forms of involvement. This brief seeks to describe the role parental involvement in education has on child well being in low income communities.  While the focus is on parental involvement in education, lessons learned can and should be applied to other fields serving children and families. Read full brief»