Why Involve Parents?

Why Family Involvement Is Important to Professionals 

• According to the Surgeon General, “Family support and participation can provide benefits, including reduced need for inpatient treatment, shorter length of stay, better service coordination, increased likelihood that a child will return home following out-of-home placement, and increased caregiver satisfaction.”

• Service design, delivery and evaluation will reflect the real and practical needs of children and their families when healthy working relationships with parents and families are maintained.

• Families from all cultures are able to help the professionals understand how to provide services that are culturally sensitive and competent.

• When families define what they need, how and when they need it, money can be targeted to services that best meet those needs.

• Family participation saves money.  Programs that are designed, delivered and evaluated with family input are more effective.  Children need less when what they get works.

• Families who get what they need are able to manage better over the long haul of their child’s illness and are less likely to burnout and need more help or, worse yet, give up.

• Most families want to be in charge of their own lives without having to depend on professionals.  When families are given adequate support and the services are effective, they are able to manage more of the coordination of the care for their child. This means the professional does not have to spend as much time doing things that the families would prefer to do themselves.

• Families who are getting what they need in the way they need it function better.  Family relationships are better, everyone is happier and parents are more likely to have an improved relationship and less conflict with professionals.

Reprinted from Minnesota Parent Leadership Network

Please contact the Idaho Federation of Families for more on how you can include families in the System of Care.