Research indicates that family engagement and involvement in the youth’s treatment and care while in a residential program is most predictive of length of stay and positive outcomes (long-term sustained placement in the home and community). As such, significant emphasis is placed on engaging families intensively in the stabilization, treatment and transition process.
Safe Response utilizes the Child and Family Team Meeting approach to collaboration with youth and families. This approach ensures that youth and families are at the forefront of identified needs and services and that the youth and family’s voice is heard first and foremost – predicting more successful outcomes.
Safe Response posits that the most important collaboration is with the youth and the youth’s family – even if the youth has severe developmental conditions and even when the family/parents may also suffer from developmental or other deficits/delays.
Family driven and youth guided care is an important guiding principle in Safe Response’s approach. Safe Response emphasizes and utilizes several approaches to encourage and assure family engagement. Each family has unique variables and situations that may challenge the family engagement process (i.e. motivation, poverty, lack of transportation, geographical separation, family/parent mental health, family/parent developmental disabilities, family/parent physical disabilities, etc.).
