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Family School announces additional weekend and evening hours
As of March 6th 2010 the Family School program is offering evening and weekend classes for parents who have work, school, or other scheduling conflicts. These program hours will be serve as an alternative to Family School’s regular Monday/Wednesday, or Tuesday/Thursday parenting classes – which will continue as usual. Please click here to download a PDF of the program announcement.
FSS partners with Dr. Elizabeth Jaeger of Saint Joseph’s University, to document and analyze program impact
Thanks to a recent grant from The Philadelphia Foundation (from the William C. Schmid and Emma Schmid nee Rentschler Memorial Fund, the Lillian Gest Memorial Fund and the William P. Gest Memorial Fund #2) Family Support Services is embarking on an outcomes measurement project with the help of Dr. Elizabeth Jaeger, an assistant professor at Saint Joseph’s Child Development Laboratory.
Using a theory of change process Dr. Jaeger is working with four programs – Family School, (the Early Intervention Parenting Program,) In Home Protective Services for Cognitively Impaired Parents, The Fairmount Early Intervention Center and Parenting Program and the Penn Early Childhood Program to identify program goals and hoped for outcomes. The project will look at client populations, short- and long-term program goals, current data collection activities and data management systems, and the agency’s reporting requirements to government funders.
By considering program evaluation—and how to best measure results—the project will also find ways to track how well FSS programs deliver on the agency’s objectives and purpose.
Agency management and program staff expect that that the project will have a significant impact on how we understand, measure, and report on FSS’ work with Child Welfare and Early Intervention clients. Overall, it is expected to improve our programs’ capacity to change the trajectories of the city’s more vulnerable children.
On May 15, 2009 Family Support Services (FSS) was awarded a contract by the Philadelphia Department of Health, Division of Maternal, Child, and Family Health, for the Healthy Start Program in Southwest Philadelphia.
The Department of Health RFP for the project describes the Healthy Start Program as one that “seeks to engage pregnant and/or parenting women (particularly women in the first trimester of their pregnancy) and provide an array of health and social services which include case management/home visiting, depression screening, health education and other services that will promote positive birth outcomes, infant health, and optimal child health development.”
FSS will be opening a new site in Southwest Philadelphia to accommodate the center based and home visiting program, with the aim to reduce infant mortality rates and improve birth outcomes. Case workers will conduct weekly home visits with new mothers during the time when help is most urgently needed - during the first six weeks after delivery. Depending on the degree of need, visits will drop back to a bimonthly or office based schedule thereafter. Children will be covered by the Healthy Start program until they are 24 months old.
For more information please contact -
Family Support Services – gcooke@fssinc.org or 610-352-7610 - Grace Sharples Cooke, Director of Development (201 South 69th Street, Upper Darby PA, 19082)
FSS’s Executive Director Shawn M. Lacy, JD was selected to receive the Lucy Sayre Award by the Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY).
PCCY’s mission is “to improve the lives and life chances of our region’s children through thoughtful and informed advocacy.” The award was given to Ms. Lacy for her outstanding achievements in serving children, youth, and families in the region. Ms. Lacy accepted the award at PCCY’s “Super Party” which was held at the new Please Touch Museum on May 7th. For more information please visit the PCCY website.
On October 24th, 2008 Family Support Services was awarded two new Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) contracts.
The contract award was a result of a competitive bidding process that closed on September 5th. More than 40 agencies submitted program proposals, each of which were then read and scored by three different DHS workers. According to an email sent out by Brian Clapier of DHS, contracts were awarded to the 10 agencies that had the highest average score.
The new In Home Protective Services (IHPS) program and IHPS for Cognitively Impaired Caregivers (IHPS-CIC) program are due to begin accepting client referrals in January 2009. FSS will be adding staff and office space in order to implement the contract.
Targeted at families engaging in behaviors that result in child abuse or neglect, IHPS service is designed to eliminate any safety threats, maintain children in their own home, prevent the emergence of new threats, and enhance a family’s capability to nurture their children.
FSS believes that many of the families it serves lack the requisite role models for appropriate parenting – so it will be the IHPS caseworker’s role to both ensure child safety, and foster a climate of learning and self advocacy among families. Much of this will be done by modeling parenting and life skills, but case workers will also ensure that parents/caregivers connect with support services and attend to the medical and educational needs of their children. IHPS service is designed to keep families moving towards goals that center on behavioral health, safety, and educational well-being.
The IHPS/CIC case workers will be providing a more intensive service to at-risk parents and caregivers who must manage parental responsibilities despite cognitive limitations. Case workers will visit the family a minimum of three times a week and each visit will both include an ongoing safety assessment, and require face to face time alone with all children.
FSS Executive Director Shawn M. Lacy congratulated her staff on the work that went into submitting the program proposals to DHS, and reported that the agency was both honored and pleased to have been selected.
A full list of all of the agencies selected by DHS follows.
IHPS General
Carson Valley Children's Aid: Citywide with a focus on heaviest police districts: 24th, 25th,15th, 35th
Congresso: 24th, 26th Police Districts
Family Support Services: 1st, 17th, Police Districts
Juvenile Justice Center: 5th,14th Police Districts
Northeast Treatment Centers: 7th, 8th,15th Police Districts
Presbyterian Children's Village: 12th, 77th Police Districts
Tabor: 22nd,23rd,25th Police Districts
PSSC/CASPA Philadelphia Society For Service To Children/Community Advocates Association for Children and Youth: 4th,3rd,6th,9th,16th Police Districts
Wordsworth: 35th, 2nd Police Districts
Youth Service Incorporated: 18th,19th, 39th Police Districts
IHPS Specialty Programs
Family Support Services: IHPS (Caseloads involving Cognitively Impaired Caregivers)
Lutheran: IHPS (Caseloads involving sex abuse)
Tabor: IHPS (Caseloads involving families living in shelters)
Wordsworth: IHPS (Caseloads involving medical issues)
For more information please contact -
Family Support Services – gcooke@fssinc.org or 610-352-7610 - Grace Sharples Cooke, Director of Development (201 South 69th Street, Upper Darby PA, 19082)
Family Support Service is now a United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania Community Partner—
Joining a number of other regional non-profits, Family Support Services was recently selected to be a new partner in United Way’s Investing in Results initiative. With the partnership comes a grant of $199,334 to help the agency achieve program goals aligned with United Way’s priorities.
“We are focusing our investments so that we invest money in agencies that can provide measurable results over the three year investment.” Joseph DiVincenzo, vice president of marketing and communications for UWSEPA said.
UWSEPA’s community level goal associated with FSS’s award is preparing children to succeed in life and school.
FSS Executive Director, Shawn M. Lacy, said that the UWSEPA community partnership alliance is a vote in favor of preventive and early intervention programs, and that the agency was delighted to be selected. “Our parent educators, staff, therapists, and social workers are honored that their work with parents has been noticed and highlighted by United Way and we are all eager to begin a new fiscal year in partnership with UWSEPA.”
Ms. Lacy said that “when it comes to raising children we know that parenting knowledge supports healthier families. But we also know that we have to find ways to demonstrate program effectiveness by creating multiple mechanisms to measure positive parenting outcomes.”
The new partnership with United Way is going to help FSS both teach parents what they need to know and find new ways of documenting their outcomes.
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