Utilizing family team meetings has been a great way to come together to support a family. Uniting everyone is so beneficial, especially on a complicated case.
Family team meetings are a critical way to engage parents, attorneys and other stakeholders. However, through collaboration, we began holding them more often, evolving past the one-time-only engagement. When we held additional family meetings, we were able to engage “nontraditional” members in the meetings like people from the family’s church, school staff, friends and relatives.
Traditionally, cases started with a family team meeting, the assessment and case plan was written, and that was it for family meetings. As we get to know the families after the team meeting, we learn about more people who are influential in the lives of the families - people who can potentially make a significant impact in the success of the family. But we only find out about those individuals by blending the work and knowledge of everyone on the team.
We’ve also recognized that to reach our mutual goals, we have to step out of our comfort zone and break free of traditional roles. A common barrier has traditionally been client transportation, especially when it comes to resources. In the past we may have walked away from the issue because it was someone else’s responsibility. Now we look at these other people in the families’ personal network and seek out those individuals and identify how they can fill in that gap – a gap that can be so detrimental to the families’ success.
Jody
