How can a family advocate help families?
Family Advocates are an important asset to a family. Many of the advocates are helpful to the family because they have been involved with the system and various agencies before. They understand how difficult it is for families to sometime advocate for their families and the emotional ties many families have to their own family. The advocate help the family to remain calm and objective to get the needed supports and services they need to help their children, youth and adolescents remain at home, in school and live in their community.
Family Advocates are family support partners. They support the family by empowering parents to make decisions on their own by giving them the information they need. When the family advocate is no longer involved, the family is able to make decisions based on information and choices. Parents are able to speak for themselves after receiving an informal education they receive from the family advocate. There are many benefits to families having their own family advocate to help parents meet the needs of their family.
There are two benefits of a family working with a family advocate:
2. A family being able to verbally say what their needs are and being about to get that need met; and
3. Families and being able to say what their needs are without feeling threatened.
Families become empowered based on knowledge, education, and information. This way, they are better able to help their family. The system can be difficult to manage and negotiate for some families, even experienced families who believe they know how to advocate for their families. Having that extra voice and a neutral person to support your decisions, and is available just for can be quite helpful in many situations.
A good example would be having a law guardian. Law guardians are advocates for the child and their primary role is to represent the best interest of the child. Family Advocates or family support partners serve the same role with families. They are available to represent and support the family; and to ensure their voice is heard throughout the system as it relates to getting the needs of the family met.
When families have children with serious emotional, behavioral, or social challenges, they do not always find the supports they need within their own family support system and therefore must rely on others for help. This is where the family advocate plays an important role with families. The family advocate serves the role as the family support partner and is usually available when the family is no longer receiving services from the system of care.
What skills are needed for a good family advocate?
2. Know where to find answers to families questions,
3. Always remain objective,
4. Have the skills to empower others,
5. Always remain objective and strength based.
The Principles of Family Support:
Family Support is a constellation of formal and informal services and tangible goods that are defined and determined by families. It is “whatever it takes” for a family to care for and live with a child or adolescent who has an emotional and/or behavioral disability. It also includes supports needed to assist families to maintain close involvement with their children who are in out-of-home placement and to help families when their children are ready to return home. A family member or caregiver who is raising or has raised a child with emotional, social, behavioral, and or learning differences always provides family Support.
Principles
- Decisions must be based on a family’s preferences, choices and values and not on administrative expediencies;
- Families must be recognized as the primary resource and decision-makers for their child;
- Families must have access to a flexible, affordable, individualized array of supports, services and material items that provide “whatever it takes” to maintain them as a family;
- The family’s strengths, including the social networks and informal supports already available to and within the family, should be the foundation upon which new supports are designed and/or provided. Furthermore, if (but only if) the family wishes it, family support services should help to expand and strengthen the informal resources available to the family.
- Support services must be culturally and geographically sensitive and able to meet the diverse needs of the family;
- Family supports must be affordable, well-coordinated, accessible and available to all families who need them, when and how they need them.
Source for the Principles of Family Support: Families Together of New York State, the State Chapter of the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health