Practice Area 3
When you talk with families about their well-being, you can support them in thinking about and making short- and long-term goals. When the specifics of these goals start to become clear, you can then offer appropriate resources and referrals to guide and strengthen families in reaching their goals.
Examples of How to Use This Practice
Help families identify their well-being goals in the short and long term. Then support them in developing a plan to make progress toward their goals:
- Start by asking families about their hopes, wishes, and goals for the future.
- Help families identify steps for the coming days, weeks, and months to make progress toward their goals.
- Offer resources and supports to help reduce and overcome challenges families face in meeting their goals.
Reflection Questions
- How will you work with families to identify their short- and long-term goals for well-being, based on their unique strengths and needs?
- What types of supports can you and your program offer the family to support their well-being goals? What community supports would be most useful to the family?
- How will you regularly follow up with families to learn their progress toward their family goals for well-being?
- How could you share and discuss aggregate data about family goals for well-being with your team and supervisor to ensure that your program has responsive services to support families' goals for well-being?
Read more:
Resource Type: Article
National Centers: Parent, Family and Community Engagement
Audience: Family Service Workers
Last Updated: August 14, 2023