As the parent of two tiny humans, ages 2.5 and 4.5, and a public health practitioner focused on supporting children’s well-being, I (Jacquelyn) regularly read about the science, practice, and art of rearing children into socially, emotionally, and physically healthy adults. I’ve noticed a common theme in both my professional and personal reading - what happens if we focus on strengths instead of deficits? While I don’t recall exactly where I came across this, and am paraphrasing, this passage resonated with me and is now shaping my interactions with all children, including my own:
“If your child is good at English and bad at math, get them an English tutor.” Historically and culturally, we identify and respond to a child’s deficits. But what would happen if we capitalized on their strengths?
While this seems commonsensical and almost primitive, identifying and building on strengths instead of identifying and responding to deficits is still a novel approach for many child- and family-serving systems and sectors. However, under the leadership and guidance of Paul Dworkin, MD, Executive Vice President for Community Child Health, the Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health (the Office) and its 17 community-oriented programs are long-standing champions and advocates of both elevating the voice of the family and strengthening families' protective factors.
OCCH embraced the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework (Framework), developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. The Framework is research-informed and strength-based, helping all families to identify and build on their own unique protective factors (Children’s Trust Fund Alliance, 2023). Protective factors are the environmental conditions or personal attributes that make a caregiver, child, or family more likely to thrive and less likely to experience a negative outcome.
The five protective factors championed by CSSP’s Framework include:
1. Parental Resilience - The ability to recover from difficult experiences, and often to be strengthened by and even transformed by them.
2. Social Connections - Positive relationships that provide emotional, informational, instrumental, and spiritual support.
3. Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development - Understanding child development and parenting strategies that support physical, cognitive, language, social, and emotional development.
4. Concrete Support in Times of Need - Access to concrete support and services that address a family’s needs and help minimize stress caused by challenges.
5. Social and Emotional Competence of Children - Family and child interactions that help children develop the ability to communicate clearly, recognize and regulate their emotions, and establish and maintain relationships.
Last year, Childhood Prosperity Lab had the opportunity to think strategically about integrating strength-based approaches into our work advancing social innovations. Recognizing the need for both practice and culture change to meaningfully integrate strength-based approaches, the Lab became certified trainers for the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework, and now offers customizable training on the Framework. Last summer, the Lab created a training curriculum for a local ACES Head Start team. At the end of the training, a participant noted that the training used “great examples, leveraged a team approach and that the content was appropriate” for their day-to-day work.
To learn more about the training and explore how it can benefit your organization, please fill out this form.