Across the country, community and state organizations in
mental health, social services, health care, and education are developing new
frameworks to put families at the center of collaborative, strength-based,
culturally responsive services. Founded in 2000, The Family Centered
Services Project (FCSP) is dedicated to inspiring, supporting and enhancing
agencies’ ability to develop family-centered philosophy and practice through
training, organizational consultation, and ongoing coaching and technical
assistance.
Our Approach FCSP recognizes that the challenge to develop program structures and
organizational cultures that support more respectful and responsive
interactions with families can be a great one. We offer training and
organizational consultation to help mental health, social services, health care
and educational agencies embrace and sustain family centered philosophy and
practice. Our approach is
collaborative—designed to help your staff and administrators feel empowered,
engaged and energized about new learning and new approaches, and to create a
high-level of buy-in across all levels of your organization. The framework that
guides our work draws from a variety of field-tested, cutting-edge theoretical
models and is guided by the following principles:
* Striving for cultural responsiveness and honoring family and
community wisdom
* Believing in the possibility of change and building on family and
community resourcefulness
* Working in partnership with families and fitting services to clients
rather than clients to services
* Engaging in empowering processes and actively eliciting client feedback
Outcomes and Benefits
Family centered services are clinically effective, fiscally efficient, and in
high demand. Family advocacy groups have called for just such an
approach. Empirical research has documented the centrality of constructive
helping relationships for good outcomes for families. And, professionals
report that this approach not only makes their work with families more
effective but also contributes to their feeling energized and hopeful in the
workplace. In our experience, organizations that imbue their processes and
structures with a commitment to family centered practice experience a
high-level of staff empowerment, buy-in, and productivity.
Our Staff William Madsen, Ph.D. is the Founder and
Director of the Family Centered Services Project. He provides international training and
consultation regarding collaborative approaches to therapy and the development
of institutional cultures that support family-centered work. Prior to his
current efforts, Bill was the Director of the Program in Narrative Therapies at
the Family Institute of Cambridge and a Senior Associate at the Public
Conversations Project. He has spent most
of the last 30 years working with multi-stressed families in public sector
mental health, social service and health care settings. He has developed and administered innovative
programs that combine outpatient and home-based services and has written and
presented extensively about the development of strengths-based, collaborative
partnerships between families and helpers.
He is the author of Collaborative
Therapy with Multi-Stressed Families (2nd Edition) and is currently
working on another book tentatively entitled, Helping: Towards More Supportive Services, which is an effort to
highlight a practice framework of "collaborative helping" for family support workers, case managers, and
milieu workers.
Philip Decter, MA, MSW is the Associate Director of the Family Centered Services Project. He is a social worker and family therapist who has worked with children and families in inpatient, outpatient, home- based,
foster care and emergency room settings for more than 15
years. He works regularly with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Family Services as a trainer and consultant and is on the faculty at Simmons and Smith Colleges. He lives in Boston with his wife Jennifer and their son Emmett.
In addition to Bill and Phil, there are a number of FCSP associates who work on particular projects.
