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Family & Community Compact
The Family and Community Compact is a new paradigm that challenges our community regarding its perception about families. In this new paradigm, the family and the community are the key decision makers. The system serves to facilitate the necessary resources and provide competent professional support to achieve their decisions.
Children and their families residing in the greater Grand Rapids metropolitan area and in Kent County who must be immediately removed from the home due to abuse or neglect are the identified program target population. Direct referrals are made to Family Outreach Center by Children's Protective Service (CPS) when families opt to participate in the Family and Community Compact versus participating in the traditional foster care process at the point of investigation. The Compact meeting is convened by the Compact Coordinators and involves as many of the pertinent family and extended family members and community representatives as possible, in addition to select professionals. The custodial parent with the substantiated case of abuse and neglect helps to identify those family and community members and fictive kin with whom the child has an emotional attachment to be included in the Compact meeting. The group may include, but not be limited to, extended family, god-parents, child care providers, ministers, and the like.
The focus of the intervention is to identify an individual or family from within the abusing parent's kinship network (blood relative or fictive kin) who will provide the care, safety and protection needed for the child. Those attending the Compact also help to develop an appropriate treatment plan for the abusing parent in an effort to eliminate the behaviors which prompted the referral to CPS and resulted in the substantiation.
Objective:
A reduction in the number of children entering the traditional foster care system.
Eligibility:
Families residing in Kent County with substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect.
Funding:
Funding is provided by the Michigan Department of Human Services, Grand Rapids Community Foundation, and the Heart of West Michigan United Way.
For more information please contact us by phone at (616) 247-3815 or email at:
info@familyoutreachcenter.org
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