Family Resiliency
Thomas R. Lee, Ph.D., Professor and Extension Specialist, Department of Family and Human Development, Utah State University; Jay A. Mancini, Ph.D., Professor, Extension Specialist, and Dept Chair, Department of Family and Child Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; C. Sue Miles, Ph.D., Extension Program Leader, Individual, Family, and Community Well-Being, Department of Human Service Studies, Cornell University, N.Y.; Lydia I. Marek, Ph.D., Research Associate, Department of Family and Child Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
I. Background
This research was conducted to better understand the characteristics
of community-based programs that target children, youth and families
at risk and that have been sustained over a period of time. We
know that in order for a lasting impact to be achieved, programs
must be on-going. The Annie E. Casey foundation funded this project
through the National Network for Family Resiliency (NNFR) of the
Cooperative States Research, Education, and Extension Service
(CSREES) of USDA. In response to NNFR's call for proposals, three
land-grant universities, Virginia Tech, Utah State University,
and Cornell University, collaborated to carry out this project.
It began June 1, 1995.
II. Goal of the Project
The goal of this project was to identify examples of sustained
community-based programs that could serve as models in program
planning and implementation. By definition, community-based programs
need to be adapted to the needs of the local communities they
serve. This project sought to identify model programs that have
demonstrated effectiveness over a sustained period of time.
Many prevention programs found in the literature review were able to produce positive effects on participants and their communities. However, most of the programs reviewed in the literature probably do not exist today. An extremely small percentage of philanthropic money is used to sustain existing programs. No good source presently exists that shows how to sustain an existing program. Little is written about the topic of sustainability, whereas much is written about other criteria that make programs successful. Also, many articles written to address sustainability are, instead, commentary on some aspect of sustainability.
III. Methodology
In order to identify model programs, we established working criteria.
These criteria were based on the published literature and experiences
of those involved in this project. Programs were: 1) community
based and carried out in collaboration with many community partners,
2) comprehensive in scope, 3) inclusive of program participants
in planning, delivery, and evaluation, 4) preventive through successfully
interfacing service and education with an asset perspective, 5)
developmentally appropriate and research based, 6) accessible
to participants, 7) accountable to stakeholders through demonstration
of positive outcomes, 8) sustainable based on the program having
been in existence for a while.
We then needed to identify a pool of community programs that met those criteria, to conduct telephone interviews, and eventually to conduct site visits and program reviews with the most promising of those programs. Based on site visits to those most promising programs, it was hoped that factors critical to program sustainability would emerge.
In July 1995, a request for nominations of programs that met these eight criteria were sent over CYFERnet (Children, Youth, and Families Electronic Resource Network and Famnet (Family Network). Because of limited responses, 20 people in the field (USDA, academicians, and foundations) were contacted to directly solicit program nominations. In addition, a renewed call was made for nominations over CYFERnet and FAMnet. We then had a final list of over 60 promising programs.
An interview instrument was developed using the eight criteria we had established for quality community-based programs. All identified programs were contacted (or attempted to be contacted) and 51 programs were contacted and deemed appropriate for this project. Forty six were interviewed by telephone in November and December, 1995. These interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and were audio-taped and transcribed. A ratings form was developed and five people involved in this project read through all transcripts and rated each program. All five raters then noted their top 10 programs; eight of these programs were on all five raters' list. These eight programs were then contacted and site visits were scheduled--seven of them between February and April, 1996. A site visit protocol was developed; for all but one site, at least two project members went on each site visit. Interviews and/or focus groups were conducted with program directors, program staff, participants, parents of participants, community members, businesses involved in the program, and other community agencies.
After each visit, the site visitors developed an overview of the program. The format for these overviews included Program Context, Program Description, Program Fit with Criteria, and Implications for Sustainability. These seven overviews were then analyzed to determine how our eight criteria fit each program's view of itself as well as our view of each program.
IV. Selected Model Sites
1. Youth Opportunities Unlimited -- Manchester, New Hampshire
Youth Opportunities Unlimited has operated in the inner city of
Manchester since 1991. They serve at-risk children and youth vulnerable
to increasing rates of crime, drug traffic, prostitution, and
violence in their neighborhoods. It is an after-school program
providing safe, enriching, and educational activities for children
who would otherwise be in unsafe neighborhood conditions or not
be able to do anything outside the home because of the dangers.
They involve parents in program activities and offer support and
education to enhance family functioning.
There are four components:
2. Cities in Schools (CIS) -- Charlotte, North Carolina
CIS has been in operation for 10 years in Charlotte. It is modeled
on a national program that has been in existence for more than
30 years. They are a national network which models the process
of linking children, teens, and parents with caring people and
local organizations. Their mission is to develop public/private
partnerships that connect appropriate human services with at-risk
youth in addressing school attendance, literacy, job preparedness,
teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, self esteem, teen suicide,
suppressed creativity, and school violence. They accomplish this
by mobilizing and coordinating community resources to ensure that
students achieve a productive personal and educational experience
through graduation. Their philosophy in support of this mission
is that the whole child must be supported and the whole community
must be involved.
They provide a broad range of services to children including: tutors; mentors; dental, medical and optometric services; college incentives; scholarships for post-secondary education; job training; counseling; and home visits with families. These services are offered through coordinated teams positioned in 21 different schools.
3. Southside Boys and Girls Club -- Norfolk, Virginia
Southside Boys and Girls Club has been located in the Berkeley
section for the past 28 years. This area has a history of poverty,
under-employment and unemployment, and on-going problems with
street violence and drug trafficking. Most programs are delivered
at the Center except for outreach activities in the local schools.
The facility provides game rooms, homework and meeting rooms,
a gymnasium, and a library offering a place of physical security
to the members. A variety of programs are available such as: Stop
the Violence, Reach out and Touch (multicultural awareness), Help
Someone (teaching teens to mentor and support others), Youth Employment,
and Positive Confrontation. These programs are designed to address
significant needs of children and youth.
4. Family Resource Development Association -- Cedar Rapids,
Iowa
For the past eight years, they have provided planning, administration,
evaluation, and facilitated operations for four family resource
centers in distressed geographic areas in Cedar Rapids. These
programs primarily target young parents and children. They integrate
services (over 20 agencies) who build on the strengths of agencies
and at-risk families and children. One center is located in renovated
housing, two are in urban schools, and one is in a day care center.
These centers are designed to overcome the categorical barriers
that prevent pooling and use of informal and formal resources
for flexible services. (need more on specific programs offered).
5. Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture -- Brooklyn,
New York
For the past nine years, this program has targeted at-risk youth
in Central Brooklyn. The neighborhoods within this community have
deteriorated physically, and the resources for youth within the
community are limited. The majority of program participants are
from low-income, single-parent African American families. The
core of their youth program includes sports and cultural activities,
math and science education, and counseling. Sports and cultural
activities are used as a magnet to attract youth to their program
and to keep them involved. Students participate after school two
days each week for 3-4 hours during which half the time is their
choice and the other half is math instruction. One hour OF one
day is for counseling. Youth and parents must sign a contract
that the participant will be drug free and will keep up in school
work and that the youth will fully participate in the program.
A physical exam also is required. Activities (basketball, track,
cheerleading, martial arts, dance, drama, marching band) are conducted
by qualified leaders, and counseling and instruction are done
by licensed teachers and counselors from the school system. Special
events and competitions make the program particularly successful
in engaging parents.
6. Project Uplift -- Greensboro, North Carolina
For the past nine years, Project Uplift has been located in an
urban housing project where many people are addressing health,
employment, school and career issues, and drug issues. A high
percentage of families are single parents and many live on the
edge of poverty. The project facilitates services and offers many
types of educational programs. Motheread/Fatheread, G.E.D. classes,
computer literacy, community building in collaboration with the
Resident's Council, parenting and other self-help programs. They
are committed to the belief that child development, family empowerment,
and community building can be integrated and implemented in a
way that identifies and further develops the potential of each
participant and the communities that affect their lives. Their
concentrated work with participant families includes identifying
individual family strengths and building on these with information,
skill, counseling, and network support in decision making and
problem solving.
7. Hampton Family Resource Project - Hampton, Virginia
For the past four years, this project has focused on primary and
secondary prevention for families from all socioeconomic levels.
Their programs and services are used by a diverse population.
There are three major program components:
a. Healthy Start (early intervention) provides services to pregnant women and their families and tracks children up through their fifth year. Family support workers are assigned to teach the family skills (home management and parenting) during the pregnancy, to provide emotional and practical support, and to serve as role models.
b. Healthy Family (individualized prevention education) focuses on parent education and learning opportunities for families with children who are five years old and younger. Parent education is provided through classes, in-home visits, library-based family education centers, and child development newsletters. Special programs for teens on parenting are available. Child care is provided during the parent education classes.
c. Healthy Community (promotion of community values that support positive child development). A Healthy Stages Newsletter is available to all Hampton residents who have children five years old and younger.
V. Summary of How Programs Visited Fit Criteria
Overall, the eight criteria seemed to fit very well with each program's view of themselves and our view of their strengths. However, we dropped the Sustainability category, since all seven criteria were to address sustainability, and, using data that emerged from our site visits, we established a new category of criteria called Leadership and Vision. Following is a definition of each criteria with selected examples of that criteria.
VI. Selected Programs Fit with Criteria
1. Successful community programs are community based and carried out in collaboration with many community partners.
Program implementation typically involves a collaborative team approach between professionals and volunteers who work together to provide services through a series of neighborhood-based implementation teams, to coordinate services across agencies/disciplines, and to expand on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Existing community leadership and organizations are used to achieve objectives. Community-based programming adapts to the needs of the local community, and grows out of the local community, rather than being planted into it. Sustainable programs tailor their efforts to the individual community. They do not try to replicate a program that has been successful in one community in another without regard to the specific needs, strengths, and desires of the host community.
In our study, we found that all seven programs offered comprehensive services carried out in collaboration with many community partners. Some examples from our findings include Cities in Schools which demonstrates this criteria through its collaboration with over 70 agencies. There is a school-based site coordinator in each of their schools with decentralized services coordinated through schools and combined strategic partnership efforts. A specific example of this is an alternative school that a local business has adopted. They provide incentives for their employees to participate in those schools and are very involved in mentoring/tutoring and providing other resources for that school.
Hampton Family Resource Project also demonstrates this criteria. From its inception, it has been firmly grounded in the Hampton Community and has relied on substantial collaboration with extant service-provision agencies, local and state government, and the business community.
2. Successful community programs are comprehensive in scope, based on an ecological or systems view of individuals, families, and communities.
Model programs are multilevel and comprehensive not only in services but in funding sources, and incorporate not only specific family based programs but community work as well. This ecostructural perspective views individuals within families within their communities. Individuals, families, and communities are viewed as having strengths inherent to developing and delivering solutions. They consider the context of providing service to a community by seeking to understand and accommodate community perceptions of needs, community values, and belief systems.
Youth Opportunities Unlimited, one of the sites we visited, provides diverse experiences for youth and parents. An after-school program for K-8 is available and a support system for children and their families is provided. Parents receive informal support through drop-in centers, home visits, conferences, workshops and monthly activities and newsletters. Coffee hours have provided support for parents to feel more connected to other parents, leading them to become more involved in other neighborhood associations and initiatives.
The Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture offers program components for youth development at the individual level, the family level, the school, and the community. They have helped to make parents feel more included in the systems that affect their children. Teachers working with this model are incorporating the experiential concepts and high standards into the regular class day.
The Hampton Family Resource Project meets a range of family needs, both social, emotional, and physical. They are managed by a broad-based steering committee made up of private and public partnerships. Day-to-day operations are managed by staff from the Health Department, Social Services, and the Public Library.
3. Successful community programs are inclusive of program participants
in program planning, delivery, and evaluation.
The Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture involves parents on advisory councils at each site. These parent councils have planned workshops and community activities for participant families on many topics of need and interest.
Communities in Schools conducts yearly parent and child surveys. Also, a parent council in each school meets with school staff and gives input on activities to do and needs to be met. Teens have a leadership team and they advise on the type of environment activities they desire.
4. Successful community programs are preventive in nature through successfully interfacing service and education and recognizing and building on participants' strengths to enhance skills.
Promoting resiliency in children, youth and families is accomplished through a prevention or empowerment approach, rather than a remediation approach. Prevention efforts may have more successful outcomes than treatment efforts which focus on repair of the damage caused by the problem.
Agency workers attempt to create momentum for positive change based upon individual, family, and community strengths. Participant autonomy is encouraged through community participation in decision-making affecting program development and administration. Empowering agencies educate people about their rights and responsibilities, about their individual and social resources, and about the barriers to obtaining and using those resources. They also enable people to develop the skills to use the power they do have or to create new power, individually and collectively. They may use peer advocates who have successfully negotiated a system to serve as mentors. Programs work within the basic structure and policies of the community network to promote change and at the same time teach clients how to work within the systemic structure as advocates.
Communities in Schools target children who appear to be at risk of dropping out of school. They provide college scholarships along with other incentives to keep them from dropping out of school or entering management schools. They provide dental and physical examinations and treatment. They also offer kids the means to give back and increase their self-esteem through community volunteering.
Southside Boys and Girls Club has a clear prevention thrust -- get the children off the streets and into programs that develop their life skills both with regard to their educational competence and their dealings with others in their family and community. The focus on building self-esteem is designed to empower children and teens. Hampton Healthy Family Resource Project provides parenting education for parents andd provides appropriate child development enrichment activities for children at the same setting. They promote positive growth and development in families and empower parents to determine, develop and use the knowledge and skills they need for effective functioning by building on individual and family strengths.
5. Successful community programs are developmentally appropriate and based on current research.
Successful programs are based on models of effective programming and on the needs of the communities they serve. This research base takes the form of community assessment and knowledge of appropriate practices to meet the needs of the populations they serve. Needs assessment may involve using existing data sources about the scope of a problem, determining existing community resources, and determining the willingness of relevant systems to work together.
As part of development, programs use a partnership between local communities and university-based researchers, build on family strengths early in the life cycle, and know the existing data base from research on various preventive interventions. Assessment of specific community needs and solutions is a key factor in promoting prevention programming success.
Current research, theory, and evaluation in the field of family support and empowerment undergirds Project Uplift. Program leaders are part of a wide range of consultants and practitioners working in community-based family resource programs to document and legitimize best practices. A constituency that also includes trainers, academics, policy makers, and funders has been a part of identifying standards developed through the family support projects. The Family Resource Development Association has shown that services and education can be integrated and improved with a concentration on specific needs in a holistic and developmental approach building on strengths.
6. Successful community programs are accessible to participants with a mix of program deliveries based on participant needs.
To be effective, programs must be located where the targeted audience can access them. Increasing accessibility may take the form of meeting as groups in participants homes, or having an outreach visiting program which goes to the participants homes. In areas with transportation difficulties, a program may facilitate center-based attendance by providing transportation for participants.
Programs also should consider language needs, literacy rate, and educational level of client in an effort to gear service delivery at the appropriate level. They also should actively promote knowledge of existing services to the community through community forums, newsletters, directories, conferences, and workshops. A variety of delivery approaches is probably most effective in providing lasting results.
Many of the programs visited provide home visits to make their
programs more accessible to participants. The Jackie Robinson
Center for Physical Culture is decentralized with program activities
based in the public schools in the neighborhoods being served.
They are held after school in the afternoons and early evening.
Transportation to events at other schools is coordinated by the
program. The Hampton Family Resource Project's philosophy is to
engage the community and its needs. Classes for parents are offered
at convenient times and meals and child care are provided to encourage
participation. The home visiting team is very sensitive to the
needs and constraints that new mothers have and are functioning
on behalf of those mothers. In addition, Youth Opportunities Unlimited
has Spanish speaking family support workers -- particularly helpful
to Hispanic families that have moved into the area.
Southside Boys and Girls Club has used success stories to demonstrate impact. Members who succeed in higher education or in business are referenced as models for current Club members. Youth Opportunities Unlimited has had a strong evaluation component since its inception. Evaluation has been both process- and outcome-oriented. The involvement of a faculty member from the University of New Hampshire in assessing impact on resiliency factors led to modifications in program delivery that has made it more effective. Survey data from parents and teachers have provided good evidence of impact.
The Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture has effectively used performances and competitions to demonstrate program effectiveness to decision makers and stakeholders. They readily demonstrate that the program is valued by the children, the parents, and the schools.
Communities in Schools began getting baseline data five years ago and has yearly parent, child, teacher and tutor surveys. They had a research instrument designed for them by UNC-Chapel Hill and have continuously documented their successes. Yearly feedback from surveys are fed back to site coordinators from supervisors, and program changes are appropriately made.
8. Successful programs have leaders with vision.
This additional criterion was the program leader's ability to think through an organization's mission, and to define and establish it clearly and visibly. Leaders serve as models, symbolizing a group's unity and identity. They view themselves as ultimately responsible and therefore surround themselves with strong associates and subordinates who function ably and independently and whose development they encourage. They function in a team relationship. Importantly, they demonstrate long range vision, showing an ability to think beyond the day's crises, beyond the quarter. They think contextually, incorporating the relationship of their agency to larger external organizations and global trends. They are able to reach and influence constituents beyond their jurisdictions. They think in terms of renewal, seeking the revisions of process and structure by an ever-changing reality.
Project Uplift's strong and committed leadership has nurtured the program since its inception. The program's vision has been kept in front of decision-makers over the years and as the director has provided proactive leadership and consistency in programs on-site. The program has been highly visible with aggressive monitoring and use of the impact information in communications and funding approaches. Family Resource Development Association's leader saw his role as facilitating partnership planning and on-going community collaboration. He saw himself helping to create the environment and developing consensus about what needed to be done to reach their vision.
Southside Boys and Girls Club has had the same leader for the past 25 years. In many ways the Club is the leader. He will be retiring in the next two years and no plans have been made to prepare a successor. This lack of vision may make continuity of the program difficult, if not impossible.
Implications for Program Sustainability
Sustainability is based on more than having staff skilled in writing grants for obtaining funding, important as that is. While funding is always a key issue for community-based programs, it was clear that in successful programs sustainability is a result of doing several critical things that lead to sustainability. In general, funding necessary to an ongoing program comes as a result of doing these things. Significantly, not every program reviewed fit each of our criteria equally. Programs had stronger fits with some than with others. Perhaps excelling in three or four areas compensates for having less emphasis in others. But overall, these successful programs fit the criteria we identified that are clearly established in the literature.
Based on what we learned in this study, the criteria we identified were characteristics of model programs. Most often programs that use these promising practices are sustained. But, quality programs are not always sustained, and sustained programs do not always incorporate the promising practices we have identified. It is, however, difficult to ascertain with certainty from the current data which criteria are absolutely critical and which may not have the same level of importance. Our findings indicate that the most successful programs that have been sustained share these characteristics: they provide comprehensive services carried out with a community-based collaboration; they have a mix of a prevention and intervention focus; they make their services accessible; they view individuals, families and communities as interconnected and possessing resources and strengths; and they are led by someone with commitment and vision. These programs have been accountable to a variety of stakeholders; structured, but systematic evaluation practices was a relatively new practice to many of the long standing programs. It was also less clear how some programs were connected to a research base for their practices.
Traits of successful programs need to be incorporated into program planning to increase both program quality and sustainability. These criteriaalso need to be used as benchmarks to ensure that ongoing programs are worth sustained support. The present research study was an attempt to develop and test a conceptual framework for sustainability. It is important to keep in mind that it is exploratory and will be further refined. These criteria can be used as benchmarks to ensure that ongoing programs are worth sustained support and to provide support for their continuation. The next step will be to operationalize observable practices that fit under each of the eight criteria and to develop a tool that can be used for both program planning and assessment.
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Created November 1996