Be Strong Families Helps Launch New York City’s First Primary Prevention Initiative

As key players in New York’s City’s first primary prevention initiative, the Be Strong Families East Team headed out to New York City in November to introduce the Strengthening Families™ Protective Factors framework and Parent Cafés. The NYC ACS is rolling out Family Enrichment Centers (FECs), accessible community spaces that will help connect families to services and most importantly, will co-create programming with families based on the strengths and needs of the different communities.

Katthe, Kim and Nadia delivered five days of workshops and trainings to staff from the Family Enrichment Centers from Hunts Point (South Bronx) and East New York (Brooklyn). The week began with a “bridging” workshop to connect the previous week’s training on appreciative inquiry by James Davy from the Center for Applied Appreciative Inquiry at Rutgers University. Next, we debuted the new training developed through a collaboration of BSF teams - Relationship Based Practice and Making Effective Referrals. We are happy to report that this training was a hit! The week also featured Philadelphia’s RPEA Team’s first ever Parent Café facilitation. Five RPEA members loaded in a van and traveled from Philadelphia to New York to show them just how Parent Cafés are done: “For parents, by parents”. There were tears, laughter and “ah ha” moments. Finally, the week wrapped up with workshops on Living the Protective Factors and Building Protective Factors with Families.

The FECs are eager to begin hosting recruitment Parent Cafés in their respective centers in the New Year. The RPEA East Team will be returning to NYC to facilitate the recruitment Parent Café along with Nadia and Kim with the goal of recruiting parents to join the FECs Parent Café Teams. BSF East is excited to begin the planning process for stage 2 of the initiative and continue to take NYC by storm.

Article by: Kim Velasquez