The Family Partners Credit Card: A Token Economy System Adapted for Intensive Family Preservation Services to Enable Families to Manage Difficult Behavior of Adolescents

Increasingly, families referred for Intensive Family Preservation Services have not experienced a crisis of maltreatment, focused on the parent; rather these families have children with chronic behavioral difficulties for which their parents lack the skills to cope. These are the same families whose children were formerly placed in residential programs. This paper presents The Family Partners Credit Card System, incorporating behavioral techniques developed to treat children in out-of-home placements into a family preservation model. Two case examples illustrate how the system has been modified to train biological or adoptive parents in parenting skills, enable them to teach their children pro-family behaviors, and reinforce new behaviors through a credit card that monitors an ongoing balance of credits and fines.

The Children’s Bureau’s Role in Promoting Parent Engagement and Family Support: A Brief History and Current Efforts

Over the years, federal child welfare policy has supported parent engagement and family support strategies through various Children’s Bureau funded state formula grant programs, research and demonstration discretionary grants, and technical assistance. This article highlights programs funded by two federal laws, Promoting Safe and Stable Families and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and Children’s Bureau’s efforts to test innovations and disseminate knowledge about promising and evidence-based practices regarding parent engagement and family support. The article begins with a brief legislative history and then describes several grant programs that are supported by the legislation. The article concludes with lessons learned and a discussion of the new opportunities for system changes through the Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration projects.