Services
Parents and Children Together (PACT)
PACT programs are for families requiring support with parenting and parent skill building. PACT believes that parents who learn good parenting skills can provide their children with the environment they need to thrive. Services are specifically designed for parents involved with County Children and Youth Agencies whose children are at risk of abuse or neglect, or whose children are in placement with active goals of reunification.
Through a combination of home visits and center-based parent education and training, PACT staff help parents learn how to use positive approaches and to set age-appropriate expectations for their children. Parents with children from all age groups are served.
PACT also provides special in-home support services and center-based training and group support for parents with cognitive challenges, and for teens under age 20 that face the challenges of parenting.
PACT staff is a group of well trained, dedicated, experienced professionals, including master’s level parent educators, childhood specialists, social workers, child care specialists, and community outreach workers. As needed, parents are referred to community resources and services for mental health, alcohol or drug counseling, housing, early intervention, and other services.
Clinical Visitation
The Clinical Visitation program provides professional observation, assessment, and support services to families whose children have been recently placed out-of-home by Children & Youth Services. This program seeks to decrease the length of stay in out-of-home placements for children to ensure successful reunification or permanency within 12 months, while promoting their safety, positive adjustment and well-being. Clinical Visitation provides intensive skill-building opportunities for natural parents and family caregivers, increases familial strengths and resources, and creates opportunities for naturalistic observation/evaluation of parent-child interactions to aid in the permanency planning process.
Program features include:
- Bonding between the children and family is maintained and enhanced through planned therapeutic visitation, which is coordinated and supervised by a Master’s Level Clinical Visitation Specialist.
- Visitation is guided by a formal Clinical Visitation Plan which outlines concrete objectives and goals which the family needs to achieve in order to progress from the supervised office visits to unsupervised overnight stays in the home.
- Intensive home and community training and support is provided to families in their natural environments so that families may generalize the skills necessary to become self-reliant.
- Parenting skills training and counseling, aimed at strengthening the family’s ability to care for and bond with their children, are conducted during therapeutic in-home and community visitations with the children.
- Independent use of community resources by the family is promoted to enhance the family’s stability and the children’s development.
