A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n
Family Support: Program, Philosophy, Approach, or Movement?
Sharon L. Kagan, Ed.D. and Michelle J. Neuman
Yale University
Family support is soaring to the top of the national agenda. Responding to demographic and economic realities experienced by families in the U.S.--the large number of single-parent families, teen parents, mothers who work outside the home, the high proportion of families with young children living in poverty--family support provides emotional, informational, and instrumental supports to families as they confront the challenging task of raising their children. Although services help those struggling with low-incomes, unemployment, poor health, and other stressors, family support is generally accessible to all families. As the nation looks to reform its social policies and services for families, family support has garnered significant attention and interest because of its emphasis on non-hierarchal relationships, parents as partners in program governance, community resources, non-stigmatized services, prevention, building independence and self-reliance, and its strengths-based orientation.
Yet, for many, family support remains an ambiguous term; is family support a program, a philosophy, an approach, or a movement? We suggest that family support is all four--an evolving, dynamic movement composed of programs, principles, and approaches. To support this position, we trace the evolution of family support and posit that currently the family support movement is on the verge of a transition toward a new normative system for human service provision.
The Family Support Programs
Family support began in the late 1970s as a grass-roots movement, largely characterized by scattered programs where staff provided informal support services to parents with young children. Diverse and highly idiosyncratic, the programs existed independently of one another, although they shared a desire to serve entire families and to do so in a way that was non-judgmental, highly inclusive of all family members, and preventive in orientation. During this era, discrete programs proliferated, with few opportunities for linkage among them.
The Family Support Principles
Scattered programs slowly became aware of one another and decided to come together to share their work, philosophies, and concerns. During this period, in the early- to mid-1980s, meetings were held, organizations were formed, and the ideas that framed the individual programs were codified into a working set of principles--decentralized decision-making, according power to the consumer, preventing problems before they occur, family inclusiveness, voluntary participation. Once codified, these principles guided the development of many new programs and formed the basis for the emergence of family support to the public agenda.
The Family Support Approach
As family support emerged as a set of principles, it became apparent that its ideas were not unique to these programs. Similar ideas were being discussed as part of reform efforts that were taking hold in other domains--business, education, consumer protection, and preventative and mental health care. In fact, the ideas that undergirded family support became popular and began to transcend "the programs originally designed to contain them" (Kagan & Weissbourd, 1994, p. 475). Family support became an approach, not limited to discrete family support programs, but one that could be adapted and infused into mainstream social institutions, including public schools, health care, and social services. And isolated institutions began to adopt a family support approach.
The Family Support Movement
As family support burgeoned from programs to principles to an approach, its ideas have caught on. More and more, family support is finding its way into diverse facets of the American agenda. Family support has been manifest in legislation; it has been infused into corporate policies, striving to make business and industry more family supportive; and it has been embraced by many conventional social services bureaucracies. Presently, family support appears to be on the cusp of forming a movement, one that advocates for the creation of a new normative system of family support. Such a normative system suggests that family support will no longer be considered haphazard or unique; it will become what is normal, what prevails. Family support would become so enmeshed in the social fabric of this nation that it would not be regarded as a treatment or intervention, but as a condition of life (Garbarino & Kostelny, 1994).
Toward a New Normative System
In order to create a new normative system, there must be societal and professional advances. Our society must make a commitment to make family support accessible and available on a voluntary basis to all families. The public must pledge durable, consistent fiscal support to the system. Such support must be accompanied by a mandate to honor the diversity of all families, and family support must be seen as an essential tool to build inclusive communities. On the professional side, family support must clarify its vision of the normative system and must define the roles of responsible parties, including government and the private sector. Conceptual work is needed to better define the outcomes associated with the normative system. Professional standards and the associated knowledge base need to be developed.
A normative system of family support is a long way off. Yet, given the state of American families, the growing recognition of the importance of family support, and its rapid trajectory from a set of unconnected programs, we see family support as a viable strategy for human service delivery. Different from eras past, the question at hand is not will family support survive. Today, and for the next century, we must ask, how can we make family support--as a set of programs, principles, approaches, and a movement--survive?
References
Garbarino, J. & Kostelny, K. (1994). Family support and community development. In S. L. Kagan & B. Weissbourd (Eds.), Putting families first: America's family support movement and the challenge of change (pp. 297-320). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kagan, S. L. & Weissbourd, B. (1994). Toward a new normative system of family support. In S. L. Kagan & B. Weissbourd (Eds.), Putting families first: America's family support movement and the challenge of change (pp. 473-490). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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