The Family Services Department provides intensive, quality in-home services to families from the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare, which is served by the St. Aemilian-Lakeside subsidiary Integrated Family Services. Programs provide clinical and supportive services to bolster the work of IFS.
These areas are part of the Family Services Department:
- Family Preservation Program
- Caregiver Support and Kinship Stabilization Program
- Clinical Services
- Family Interaction Program
FAMILY PRESERVATION SERVICES
Teams serving children and families consist of a family preservation therapist and a family preservation coordinatoor. The goal of Family Services is family unification, promoting well being and keeping families together. Participation in the program can be an opportunity for families to speed up to the process of reunifying with their children, avoiding placements out of the home and/or facilitating the end of court oversight.
Family Preservation Services provides intensive in-home therapeutic services for up to 20 hours a week, depending on the family’s needs, with assistance provided as long as it is needed. Services can be offered to support families with children living at home under an informal disposition, a non-emergency court order, or as a precursor to reunification when a child has been placed out of the home.
Family Preservation Services includes:
- Individual (child and parent) and family therapy
- Intensive in-home treatment
- Parent mentoring, support and skill development in parenting skills as well as home management
- Coaching family interactions/short-term therapeutic visitation supervision prior to reunification
- 24-hour support line/availability
- Prevention and stabilization of crisis situations for children and parents
- School advocacy, helping parents interact successfully with schools and assisting with academic needs
- Problem solving and conflict resolution
- Therapeutic supervised visitation
- Linking families to ongoing community supports that will not require funding or oversight from the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare
CAREGIVER SUPPORT AND KINSHIP STABILIZATION SERVICES
Caregiver Support serves licensed foster parents of children with a variety of services to enhance their ability to meet the children’s needs. Kinship Stabilization is for relative caregivers of children in court-ordered kinship care. Both services are delivered through face-to-face contact in the home.
The goals of these services include increasing placement stability, facilitating permanence goals, advocating for children in the educational arena, and helping ensure that children in foster and kinship care are free from abuse, neglect and marginal care. Services educate caregivers about the child welfare system and caregiver role and help them problem-solve barriers to reunification and adoption. These services are paid for by network service money.
Highlights include:
- intense focus on placement stabilization and disruption prevention
- use of trauma-sensitive approaches to provide individualized parent training and support
- assessment of caregivers’ emotional capacity and mental health needs
- focus on increasing cooperation between biological parents and relative and non-related caregivers
CLINICAL SERVICES
Family Services has licensed clinicians who offer an array of services to help assess and enhance parents’ or caregivers’ abilities to meet the needs of the children in their homes.
Services available include:
- Mental health assessment of a child
- Mental health assessment of a parent/caregiver
- Trauma/Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) assessment
- Crisis intervention
- Individual therapy for Family Preservation families
- Family therapy for Family Preservation families
- Couples therapy for Family Preservation families
- Parent/Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)
FAMILY INTERACTION PROGRAM
The goals of the Family Interaction Services are family unification, promoting well-being, strengthening family relationships and keeping families together safely. Participation in the program can be an opportunity for families to reunify in a more planned, coherent manner through parent skill development and education.
Services include:
- Supervised parent/child interactions in the least restrictive environment
- Intensive in-home family interaction sessions when the home is assessed as a safe environment
- Visit coaching
- Trauma Informed Care interventions
- Parent education and skill development
- Problem solving and conflict resolution
- Transition planning
- Family advocacy and reunification planning, including assessment of family strengths and needs
For more information on Family Services, contact:
Sonja Kania
Family Services Director
St. Aemilian-Lakeside
skania@st-al-org
(414) 604-5721
