FAMILY SUCCESS
Graham Windham provides a range of programs to strengthen families and help parents care safely for their children. We also serve 900 children through our foster care program by helping them make a safe return home or placing them in new homes that will provide love and unconditional support. All in all, we have created a continuum of supports and interventions that help ensure children have safe and loving families to grow up in and have the preparation and opportunity to succeed in school and life.
Family Success Initiative Parenting Program
We aim to provide a continuum of services to help parents develop lasting behavior change and support networks in order to safely parent their children. Part of this strategy is the use of Solution-Based Casework, through which we collaborate with parents to identify goals for the family and for the parent, highlight strengths and supports the parent can call on, and develop realistic action plans for reaching their goals, with support and celebration of progress along the way. This initiative includes offerings like The Parenting Journey, an insight-oriented, 12-session parent education and support group. While our Family Success Initiative has significantly advanced our work with families, it is only part of what is needed to help some parents change. It is designed to work in combination with our other interventions that provide more frequent and intensive parenting practice opportunities.
Family Foster Care and Adoption
The children in our family foster care program have been removed from their homes. Our job is to get them back to their families or, if that is not possible, adopted into a new family or, if that is not possible, connected to someone who is willing to be that anchor, that sanctuary, for that child, no matter what, throughout their childhood. To help us do that, we have hundreds of loving and highly qualified foster parents who partner with us in this work. They are supported by a cadre of highly professional case planners, coaches, clinicians, education specialists and medical providers all of whom are working together to find safe, loving and permanent homes for children who need them. We also provide a short-term intervention (approximately 1 year), called Treatment Family Foster Care, to stabilize children with serious emotional, behavioral or mental health needs with a goal of helping achieve reunification or adoption, as appropriate.
Family Support and Empowerment
Our teams work with families seeking extra support. Using Solution-Based Casework, we actively work with parents to set goals, build on their strengths, and develop skills to achieve personal growth and overcome challenges. We provide holistic child and family assessments and customized service referrals to build connections to positive resources and supports in their community who will help them sustain their progress. Our services are available to families in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Specialized support is available for families that are struggling with substance abuse or mental health needs through the Family Treatment and Rehabilitation (FTR) programs. Brief Strategic Family Therapy (in-home family therapy) is also offered in the Bronx. General Family Support Services and Beacon Family Support are available to all families in Hunts Point, the West Bronx, and Harlem. We also support newly arrived New Yorkers at the Stewart Hotel.
Family Coaching
Our Family Coaches help families during their involvement in the foster care system (starting at intake and continuing after their reunification with their children), and help to strengthen families at risk of foster care involvement. Family coaches help parents develop the skills, resilience, and support systems they need to safely parent their children amid challenging life circumstances, and prevent child abuse and neglect. Our visit coaches meet with parents for 16 sessions before a visit, model appropriate behaviors during a visit, and debrief skill development after the visit. We also offer a support group called Network, that helps participants manage stress and behaviors through self-affirmation, sharing stresses and concerns, action planning, sitting with silence, and clearing concerns.
Health Homes and Care Coordination
Health Homes are a strength-based system of health care coordination. Clients are assigned a care manager who ensures continuity of care and comprehensive transitional care from service to service, across and within systems of education, foster care and juvenile justice. We also support foster parents, and birth parents in managing and overseeing the medical, mental health, behavioral health, dental and specialty needs and referrals of their children.
“O.U.R. Place” Family Enrichment Center
Our Family Enrichment Center is an innovative program that uses a pre-prevention model where staff works to empower the families in the community so they never become involved in the child welfare system. It uses a strength-based approach and community organizing to help families form connections in the community and access services. Services are delivered to participants in several ways. The site offers educational workshops, support groups, social activities and a gathering place for families. The site hosts Parent Cafes, which are parent-led discussions where participants share their experience and identify ways to promote protective factors while supporting each other. The site also provides service referrals.
School-Based Early Support
Through school partnerships in Harlem and Hunts Point, we support families that are facing life challenges and need extra resources and support to provide for their children’s wellbeing. This includes developing supportive communities, providing help with essential needs (e.g. food, baby items, rent, utilities), providing support accessing government benefits, supporting parents with school engagement, and offering parenting skills workshops using the Triple P—Positive Parenting Program evidence-based model.
