Strengthening Families Coordination Service
What is Strengthening Families?
Strengthening Families is a free service to help you coordinate and access the services you need for your family.
If there is more than one agency supporting a child or young person in your family, the Family Works South Canterbury Strengthening Families coordinator can help you ensure everyone involved is working together towards the same goals.
If you would like to be part of the Strengthening Families process, our coordinator will work with you to identify which people and agencies can help your family. We then set up a meeting where you are encouraged and supported to talk about your family’s needs and what you want to achieve for your family. Each of the agency representatives will explain how they can help and everyone gets the chance to see the big picture.
Together, we make a plan that suits your family and then everyone agrees how they will work together to make it happen. This includes agreeing to the steps each agency will take and arranging follow-up meeting(s) or reviews to check on progress and results.
Strengthening Families is family led and family driven – we focus on what you need, the results you want and how everyone can work together to help you achieve your goals. It’s important that you play an active part in this process. Family / whanau choose where meetings will be held, and who to invite.
What can Strengthening Families help us with?
Strengthening families is powerful because it can help your family with several issues or concerns at the same time.
These can include:
- parenting skills / child management issues
- a child or young person’s behaviour
- a child or young person’s physical health or disability
- a family’s financial situation, budget management problems or debt
- truancy / non attendance at school
- mental health issues
- family relationships
- family violence
