2008 Annual Report - Families First Parenting Programs

Children’s Services of Roxbury
Founded over thirty years ago, the mission
of Children’s Services of roxbury (CSr) is to
provide high quality services and programs
to economically disadvantaged infants,
children, adolescents, and their families,
thereby promoting and strengthening family
life and individual growth. CSr addresses
issues related to unemployment, housing,
substance abuse, healthcare, literacy, and
parenting, offering over 20 social service
programs to about 2,600 people each year.
CSr’s Intensive Foster Care program works
to place children in stable, loving, nurturing
foster homes. the goal of the program
is to find both short-term and long-term
placements for at-risk children and youth
who have been abused and/or neglected
and also have a broad range of emotional,
physical, and developmental special needs.
Foster parents in the program receive
eight weeks of thorough training and are
supported by a full-time staff of social
workers and case managers. they also
attend bi-weekly meetings to discuss the
progress of the children in their care and
to receive continuous training in effective
foster parenting techniques.
Seeking to fill a critical service gap in its
parenting education programs for foster
parents, CSr contacted Families First in
2007 and asked us to help meet the needs
of this population. primarily women, these
foster parents come from diverse ethnic
and linguistic backgrounds, speaking
english, Spanish, and/or Haitian Creole in
their homes. they vary in age, as do the
children they foster.
In fiscal year 2008, we began a partnership
with CSr delivering 32 parent workshops
and professional trainings to foster parents
who participate in CSr’s intensive foster care
program. to meet the needs of CSr’s diverse
population, we provided workshops in both
english and Spanish. our programming has
included workshops on discipline, selfesteem,
and adolescent development. We
have also provided professional trainings on
cultural competency, parenting essentials,
and ways to work with teen parents. CSr
is extremely satisfied with our services and
has now scheduled 26 more programs to
take place in fiscal year 2009. CSr also runs
an Intensive Foster Care program out of
their tewksbury office and has requested a
comparable program model for those foster
parents. We are currently looking for ways to
financially support an increase in services to
this organization and foster parents in need
of support and information.
We know that our programs make a
difference based on comments from
Children’s Services of roxbury like these:
“I am writing to thank you for providing
trainings for our foster parents at Children’s
Services of roxbury (CSr). Your trainings have
been able to address the unique situations
intensive foster care parents and our regular
foster parents have to address. We would
not have been able to offer such quality
workshops without your subsidized rate.
a number of topics have been covered
by Families First parenting programs, all of
which have been valuable in providing
our foster parents with additional skills
to effectively foster these children, many
having challenging behaviors. the Families
First parenting programs trainers were always
prompt and well prepared. We have
received positive feedback from our foster
parents regarding the trainings. Families
First parenting programs has provided
valuable information to our foster parents,
and CSr has been very pleased with the
trainings provided.”
Ted Blake, Family Resource
Supervisor, CSR
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