Through Family Support Centers, the Rhode Island Family Support Initiative helps families obtain legal help, clothing, housing assistance, furniture, health care, Early Head Start, and parent education. Center staff locate appropriate services for families, help them apply, accompany them to community-based services, and provide follow-up advocacy and transportation when necessary. Families are encouraged to connect with other families and to enjoy group activities. Parents and Children Together (PACT) in Honolulu, Hawaii creates opportunities for families and children to identify and address their own strengths, needs, and concerns. PACT’s programs include early childhood education through Early Head Start and Head Start; prevention and treatment of child abuse, neglect, and domestic violence; mental health support; community building and economic development; and family literacy, educational, and vocational activities (ESL, GED, etc.). Family support workers help families in crisis obtain comprehensive health, education, and social services. www.cssp.org/doris_duke/index.html

• Conveniently located community centers that offer non-stigmatized settings for child care, after-school activities, parent support programs, sports and recreation, counseling, employment-related services, classes in English as a Second Language or citizenship, and exercise.
• Activities that connect fragile families with supportive, caring adults
• Family support programs and family-strengthening events and activities
• Neighborhood information, resource, and referral networks (including those that mix children and families with and without special difficulties or risks)
• Provision of assistance with problems as an integral part of their program, or by providing help in finding assistance.

Providers of services and supports establish formal mechanisms to help high-risk families develop responsive, nurturing parent-child relationships and strong, respectful, trusting relationships with support systems. They make available:

	The Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker (MIHOW) program is a low-cost, parent-to-parent intervention to improve health and child development for low-income families. MIHOW is a partnership between the Vanderbilt University Center for Health Services and community-based organizations in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Program staff are mothers who are trusted locally for their energy, integrity, compassion, and community commitment. They visit pregnant women and families with children up to three years old in their homes to listen to parents' concerns; provide information on nutrition, health, and children's development; model positive parenting practices; and link parents to peer support groups and medical and social services. www.mihow.org/overviewpf.html

• Well-trained, supervised adults who offer support during pregnancy, childbirth, and child's early life (e.g., Doulas, home visitors)
• Education (coaching, mentoring, and exposure to models of good parenting) that helps parents learn and incorporate new parenting skills, understand attachment issues, understand child development, and hold realistic expectations for their children's development
• Family support services and centers

Service providers seek opportunities to connect formal services and agencies with neighborhood networks so individual families experience services and agencies as responsive and "on their side."

	Neighborhood Place Ujima is part of a national initiative, Community Partnerships for Protecting Children, which fosters shared decision making between agencies and residents. By combining their knowledge and resources, participants can plan and coordinate services to meet families’ needs. The Connecticut Department of Children and Families collaborates with the Hartford Community Partnership (a resident-led organization that receives financial and technical support from Making Connections) to bring child protective services into neighborhoods in ways that reflect residents’ needs and desires, emphasize preventive action, connect at-risk children and families with neighborhood supports and services, reduce the number of times children are removed from homes, and position DCF officers as community liaisons rather than outside authorities. www.aecf.org/initiatives/mc/sites

Providers of services and supports help families connect to each other. They encourage community organizations and natural helpers to help their hard-to-reach neighbors establish and use informal networks and services to support each other.

	MELD is a Minnesota-based program that involves parents in peer support groups during pregnancy and the child's first two years. Parents discuss parenting needs, learn about child development, and form supportive relationships. MELD’s programs are tailored to specific groups of parents, including new parents, parents of children with special needs, Hmong parents, and Hispanic parents. MELD also trains professionals who work with parents, such as Head Start staff and family service providers. www.meld.org/ Family Focus helps Chicago-area parents prepare their children for school, and meet other parents, make friends, engage in recreational and educational activities, and participate in the community. Family Focus has a special focus on pregnant and parenting teens. Staff and families work together in relationships based on equality and respect and in programs that are flexible and responsive to emerging family and community issues. http://www.family-focus.org

Actions by Local Collaboratives and Agenda Setters

Local collaboratives help programs that engage and support families (e.g., parent support groups, English as a Second Language or citizenship classes, family suppers) assist families with problems or at least provide an entry point to such services.

	The Early Start component of the Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative in Ohio conducts home visits to families with children under age 3 who are identified by other programs as being at risk of child abuse or other negative outcomes.

Collaboratives encourage national and local media, using television, radio, billboards, newspapers, and other media, to conduct public education campaigns promoting community norms that:

• Emphasize attentive, responsive, responsible child rearing and time for parenting
• Value the professionals who support and protect children and help to strengthen families
• Support positive parenting and teach about developmental milestones and age-appropriate expectations
• Reinforce healthy child development and strong families
• Promote the idea that all families need support at times

Collaboratives help parents balance work and family responsibilities by persuading employers to offer supportive workplace arrangements, including flexible schedules and telecommuting options. They persuade policymakers to make supportive workplace arrangements for parents who receive public assistance.

Local collaboratives keep funders and policymakers informed about barriers to effective action that require solutions at the funding, policy, or regulatory level.

	Under the auspices of the Allegheny County Family Support Centers, parents routinely organize to take their insights and ideas to state and local government officials. www.education.pitt.edu/ocd/publications/backgrounds/FamilySupport.pdf

Community groups encourage and facilitate the development of policies and practices that minimize administrative demands on families, by sharing client information, using common eligibility definitions and determinations, and collecting common data.

The community builds the capacity to monitor:

	The Office of Family Resource and Youth Services Centers, established by the Kentucky state legislature, provides administrative support, technical assistance, and training to Kentucky’s local school-based Family Resource and Youth Services Centers (FRYSC). Each Center has unique components, but all promote the flow of resources and support to families in ways that improve their functioning and development. To enhance students’ school success, the centers develop partnerships that promote early learning and successful transition into school. http://cfc.ky.gov/frysc The Allegheny County Family Support Centers network, financed by a mix of public and private dollars, works to prepare children to enter school, improve parenting skills among adults, and reduce repeat pregnancies among teenage mothers. The centers are located in poor neighborhoods, governed by parent councils. www.education.pitt.edu/ocd/publications/ backgrounds/FamilySupport.pdf

• Program, neighborhood, and community-wide outcomes
• The availability of primary and preventive services in addition to crisis interventions
• The availability of appropriate services and supports to everyone who needs them-both through individual programs and through community-wide decisions and resource allocations
• The cultural and linguistic appropriateness of services
• Barriers that issues of race, language, and culture might pose to families trying to obtain support Local collaboratives reduce social isolation by
• Helping families to obtain needed services
• Encouraging community organizations and natural helpers to support their hard-to-reach neighbors
• Helping families to use informal networks and services to support each other.
• Encouraging programs to act together, aggressively and coherently, to prevent family homelessness and to support homeless families.
• Promoting neighborhood revitalization and safety efforts
• Creating opportunities for civic involvement and public service.

• to make services and supports available to families when they need them, rather than requiring a diagnostic label to trigger funding and access
• to enable agencies to take action, through formal and informal means, to reach socially isolated families

Funders and policymakers work to make income and employment supports easily available to eligible families, to reduce the strain and risks that poverty places on families.

Policymakers adopt regulations, policies and practices that minimize administrative demands on families, by enabling agencies to share client information, use common eligibility definitions and determinations, and collect common data.

Funders support community efforts to monitor:

• Program, neighborhood, and community-wide outcomes
• The availability of primary and preventive services in addition to crisis interventions
• The availability of appropriate services and supports to everyone who needs them-both through individual programs and through community-wide decisions and resource allocations
• The cultural and linguistic appropriateness of services
• The removal of barriers that race, language, and culture pose to families trying to obtain support