 | Topics: Families and Gender Irony and Hope in the Emerging Family Policies
A Case for Family Empowerment Associations Copyright © 1995 by Richard Kordesh. Reprinted with permission from the author. This study was funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust, log #90-03013-000. Index Preface
Overview: What Does Family Empowerment Mean?
I. The New Family Policy Agenda: More Supportive Than Empowering
II. To Empower Families
III. Family Empowerment and Community Building
IV. Family Empowerment Associations
V. Where to Begin?
Conclusion: Repositioning Families into the Missing Middle
References
Appendix Contents Preface
Overview: What Does Family Empowerment Mean?
I. The New Family Policy Agenda: More Supportive Than Empowering Preface This monograph is the final product of the Pennsylvania Family Policy Seminars. These seminars were coordinated by Penn State's Graduate School of Public Policy and Administration with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Writing this monograph helped me to bring an empowerment perspective of community building to many of the issues covered in the project's seven seminars. The seminars themselves focused on the best practice approaches and latest research in various fields that are striving to become more supportive of families. A distinction is drawn in this monograph between family support and family empowerment. Possibilities for linking new policies and entities through what I refer to as "family empowerment associations" are explored. Readers interested in the subjects covered directly by the seminars should look through the Appendix. Briefing reports from the seminars address research and best-practice approaches in many family policy areas, and may be obtained by calling the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation at Penn State (814-865-9561). Writing this monograph also has involved me in a new type of interaction between research and practice. In the past seven years, my wife, Maureen, and I have brought four new children—Kathleen, Timothy, David, and Gregory—into our midst. I have found that my new perspective as a father reinforces my concern for the empowering as well as nurturing effects of policies for children. Although I understood it conceptually before fatherhood, I now also understand experientially how disempowered families have become in relation to large institutions. To use a central term from the monograph, even for a fairly stable, middle-class family like ours, there are many forces in our environment—media, employers, planning commissions, child care agencies, churches—that would either directly or indirectly disable our family as a productive unit in the social, economic, political, and religio-cultural realms of our lives. They would do so not out of malice or over power-seeking, but simply through their day-to-day business. I have been fortunate enough to organize my life so that I can work from home while my children are young and can share child-rearing responsibilities fairly equally with Maureen. Being home while writing this monograph has allowed me to consider questions concerning the best approaches for giving families more solid bases for exercising powers, even as they have to live in the real world of commercialism, careerism, large organizations, and pervasive media influences. I also have discovered personally the difference between being a professional who is sensitive to families and being a father who wants to shape some of the conditions in his neighborhood, municipality, and state so that they will be better places for his and other children. While the two can be complementary perspectives, the latter perspective influenced this monograph more than the former, whereas I coordinated the family policy seminars and wrote their briefing reports more from the former perspective. I hope to have achieved a perspective on policy design that can help link the new family support policies that are still implemented through formal institutions (the subject of most of the seminars) with empowering policies that would give families more opportunities to establish their own relatively autonomous institutions. Both the effectiveness of the formal institutions and the viability of families could be strengthened if better linkages between the two thrusts were forged. The monograph represents an unfinished agenda for me, and it likely has many points that could be strengthened. Already it has been strengthened considerably by criticism and advice from Beth Beh. Judy Carter, Mon Cochran, Ann Crouter, John Kyle, Theodora Ooms, and Joan Wynn. I would like to thank The Pew Charitable Trusts for its support of this project. I would also like to acknowledge the enduring support I received throughout the entire seminar project from Irwin Feller, a leader and pioneer in the quest to build strong linkages between policy development and university-based research. Finally, Lee Carpenter has helped turn many convoluted sentences and cumbersome paragraphs into a document that is at least readable, and hopefully in some passages even engaging. In the end, the argument and its explanation are my work; they do not necessarily represent the opinions of any of the above persons. Overview: What Does Family Empowerment Mean? The Need for Family Empowerment Associations
Overview of the Argument Does it refer to giving parents a greater selection of locations for their children's schooling? Does it mean teaching poor, single mothers how to interview for jobs effectively? Is it creating support groups for parents of children with particular handicaps? Does it occur when a father is helped to acquire more confidence in his child-rearing abilities? Is a family empowered when parents are invited by a counselor to define their problems in their own terms, rather than in language suggested by professional jargon? Is empowerment in effect when working parents are helped to feel less guilty about putting their child in a day care center? Does it signify a desire to organize parents into powerful lobbying networks? Unfortunately, the term as used today would seem to mean any of, all of, and much more than, the above, especially for families who really need empowerment. In recent years, the term "empowerment" has become a popular policy buzzword: it is difficult to obtain funding for a program without somehow invoking the term. All types of programs and policies now claim to seek empowerment for families and communities. One intention of this analysis is to rescue this important concept from the vague and sometimes trivial uses to which it is increasingly put. We can begin this rescue mission by first unpacking the term's three critical elements: the term "empowerment" synthesizes three ideas into one idea that could have a very specific meaning for policy development. Consider the three parts separately: Em-power-ment First, according to Webster, the prefix "em," when used with a noun (like power) means "to put into, or to go into." Like its linguistic cousin, the prefix "en," em helps transform nouns into verbs, as in encradle, enslave, and empower. Second, as shown in most sociology and political science texts, the term "power" itself is a "relational" or contextual variable. It only has meaning when one person or group is viewed in relation to another person or group. Power allows people to convince others to change their activities or agendas or to perform according to the powerholder's expectations. It also at times allows the powerholder to prevent others from pursuing certain agendas or even from becoming aware of particular problems or possible courses of action (Lukes, 1974; Gaventa, 1980). Third, the suffix "ment," again according to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, means a "state or condition resulting from a specified action," as in entertainment, development, and empowerment. Combined into one word, the three ideas take on this meaning: the condition in which one has acquired the capacity to move others to act in ways they ordinarily would not have acted. In other words, empowerment occurs when one has acquired the capacity to change what others are doing. This definition of empowerment is consistent with other definitions that emphasize empowerment as a process that leads to more control of resources, control of one's life circumstances, or more participatory skills. (An excellent summary of such definitions and the empowerment literature is in Cochran, 1992.) For instance, the Cornell Empowerment Group defines empowerment as follows (1989, p. 2): Empowerment is an intentional, dynamic, ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and control over those resources. However, this study's definition also emphasizes a characteristic of empowerment that is implicit in the logic of the Cornell definition: the empowerment process produces outcomes, in particular changes in how other persons and organizations who also influence the same resources or situations exercise their influence. Too often the term is used in public discourse without its relational meaning. In other words, it is often used as if it really had nothing to do with power at all! For example, empowerment has not occurred during the mere acquisition of the skills to act, or becoming more confident about actions about to be undertaken. The latter condition would be better described as having been imbued with confidence, and the former might be described as having been emboldened, but neither on its own is empowerment. In short, the "power" in empowerment refers to the capacity to move others in a desired direction or to prevent others from moving in an undesirable direction. This is not necessarily coercion; persuasive power may be exercised as effectively as coercive power. If one has been the beneficiary of empowerment, one has acquired the capacity to change not just personal actions but those of others, too. Now, let's recouple empowerment with the term "family." Using a broad definition reflective of the diversity of families today, a family may be defined as a small group of people committed to sharing a household in order to support and care for one another. Family empowerment would then refer to helping a family acquire the capacity to change what others are doing in ways that the family would want them to change. Emphasizing the family as the critical unit here is important: some forms of individual empowerment for particular family members—as when a parent acquires a lucrative professional position that requires him or her to spend considerable time away from home—might weaken the family, even as it gives him or her influence in professional circles. So, family empowerment refers to families acquiring the capacity to exercise power. It makes them not just into actors, but into agents capable of shaping the conditions in which they live as they would want to shape them. From this standpoint, the empowering of families would require a different emphasis in family policy development than has been found in contemporary efforts. To be successful, policies that strove to empower families would need to help them become able to change their own lives and the localities in which they live. But, bringing about changes in localities requires public activities for which families now are not organized. Therefore, families would need new institutions that allow them to exercise powers as community builders. In fact, the disempowerment of families has been a consequence of the same institution building that has precipitated much of the decline of communities. Long-term trends, undergirded by public policies, have built institutions that have stripped families of many of the productive capacities on which their having power must rest. New institutions, such as family empowerment associations, are needed to give families not just the capacities to act, but the abilities to make a difference. When one retains a grasp on the relational aspect of power, then it is possible to sort out things that are potentially good for families but are not necessarily empowering. For example, building self-esteem may lead to action, but will not on its own deliver power. Improving nutrition or providing information on child care options might energize families or prepare them to act, but on their own they will not empower them (as in the case in which all options might be unsatisfactory or unwanted). Providing someone with a support group or a nurturing friend might help relieve loneliness and buttress self-esteem, but on its own lead will not cause him/her to influence others in a social or political environment. So, family empowerment refers to families acquiring the capacity to exercise power. It makes them not just into actors, but into agents capable of shaping the conditions in which they live as they would want to shape them. The kinds of social supports described here are not empowering on their own because they do not structure the roles, institutions, and practices that facilitate change in others. In the case of families, empowerment would mean either giving them or helping them form institutions through which they can affect the institutions now exerting some influence on them. If families are to live in neighborhoods that are more suitable for them, they need to be able to influence the institutions—planning commissions, development corporations, zoning commissions—that now design the neighborhoods in which they live. If families are to have more influence over the way their children are educated, they need to have more influence over the teachers, school boards, state education boards, and legislators who now define the curricula and standards that govern their children's education. But, what they need to exercise such influence is more critical and fundamental than merely learning how to lobby and affect other institutions: families must reacquire the capacities to produce many of the goods education, neighborhoods, safety, food, healthy living practices, spiritual development—that are now supposed to be supplied (if at all) by formal institutions. The productive capacities of families must be bolstered if they are to be given a relatively autonomous base from which to act in public. Such a base would make families less dependent on formal systems than they are now and more credible in public forums and debates due to their enhanced productivity. It would give them their own expertise on which to draw in contributing to the design of public policies. The Need for Family Empowerment Associations Becoming a productive and influential force in any American locality requires organizing. Forming associations through voluntary organizing is a vintage American method of acquiring the power to solve problems, shape living conditions, and influence others. Families need to form such associations if they are to survive and ultimately thrive in a world in which virtually every other interest is already organized through incorporated bodies. But, despite the need for voluntarism, no sector of associations—business, nonprofit, church, or municipal—thrives without the authority and legitimacy also conferred on it through government actions. State and federal policies are critical to the building of associations, consciously and unconsciously allocating powers to different types. States define and delimit the distinctive powers of for-profit and nonprofit associations. For instance, some states are considering the taxation of profitable cafes and health clubs operated by nonprofit organizations like the YMCA. There is constant policy debate over the empowering and disempowering of churches with respect to their roles in public life: state and federal policy debates have dealt with whether to allow federal funds for church-based child care. Business-government relations are under the continuous scrutiny of legislatures, agencies, and courts. All of these policy making domains involve the distribution of powers by government to various types of associations. However, for all of their talk about empowering families, policymakers and policy advocates gave precious little attention to such empowerment by enabling them to form and incorporate productive, influential associations. Absent a focus on organizations, there is a vague and hollow ring to much of the public exhortation about family empowerment. But, what would family empowerment entail if the term were taken seriously? What if we really meant empowerment? A true consensus on the best ways to empower families would enable them to find the institutional means to jointly improve their lives and communities. One institutional model, the "family empowerment association," would help families organize to reacquire (in some meaningful, although still obviously limited, way) the capacities lost gradually to formal organizations. A middle, buffering layer of such associations is needed between individual families and formal organizations such as schools, agencies, businesses, and churches. Family empowerment associations could form through informal networking or structured organizing. For instance, imagine a neighborhood in which many of the parents who worked part-time (an increasingly common condition, given the evolution of the economy) either could not afford professional child care or did not want to put their children into professional day care. As is true of most real neighborhoods, no particular parent would have the time or perhaps the organizing skills to put together a cooperative child care network that matched children with parents on their off-days, arranged transportation, organized consensus on the activities that would be structured for children, and other matters. However, continue imagining that the local cooperative extension service had staff specifically trained and funded to help organize these very kinds of associations. In fact, in a poor neighborhood, the extension worker also has the knowledge and skills necessary to help parents incorporate and become eligible for foundation and state grants for purchasing playlot equipment for parents' use when engaged in child care. Furthermore, the parents association also might be able to purchase a property in the neighborhood, work with an architect, and jointly build a garden and playground, further enhancing the quality of the child care and helping to build a stronger sense of ownership by the families in their child care enterprise. One institutional model, the "family empowerment association, " would help families organize to reacquire capacities lost gradually to formal organizations. This scenario highlights some activities that already take place in some neighborhoods—parents sharing in child care, sharing transportation—but goes beyond the typical limits of informal networking to begin involving families jointly in producing child development, acquiring property, and changing their neighborhood. That next level—beyond wholly informal networking—would have required policy actions that would have made the extension worker with organizing skills available, the grants accessible, and the zoning and planning decisions necessary for the realization of more significant empowerment for families. One also could envision how this association could make these organized families more influential in other planning and zoning activities affecting their neighborhood. Such activities already exist in some localities. The Family Matters program combines child development and parent education with neighborhood cluster meetings that enable parents to address harmful conditions in their localities (Cochran, 1985, 1987). A community development corporation in Indianapolis, In., Eastside Community Investments (ECI), has formed a family day care cooperative that trains mothers in the neighborhood in both the business and child development aspects of running a viable family day care operation. ECI helps the same mothers acquire housing redevelopment financing in order to purchase and ready their homes for providing family day care. It also forms them into mutual support groups. ECI has a "sister" organization in the neighborhood, the Near Eastside Community Organization, which occasionally provides clout with the city or landlords, serving as the neighborhood's "stick-in-the-closet" in the local political arena. A similar cooperative has been formed by the Bethel New Life CDC in Chicago. Empowerment need not only begin with organizing around social concerns, such as child care. Consider a scenario that has a religious foundation. Imagine that a group of families in a Catholic or Protestant parish has formed a "base community," an informal group without clergy leadership that meets periodically for meals, worship, sharing of spiritual and family concerns, and perhaps some rituals they designed on their own (Maney, 1984; McDougal, 1993). They might decide that how they prepare food and meals is significant from the standpoint of their spirituality. Perhaps their rituals are organized around meals; thus, they could become a stronger small community if they also grew some of the food for those meals in shared garden space. One can see how their interest in shared spiritual concerns could quickly evolve into concerns with property (gardening space), financing (tools, seeds, fertilizer, fencing), politics (zoning, becoming eligible for "seed" grants), and child development (giving children developmentally appropriate roles in the gardening and meal preparation). In other words, to broaden their base as a spiritually nurturing community, they would need to organize, and organizing would necessitate dealing with politics, money, and knowledge of human development. Currently, the informal lives of families are becoming increasingly impoverished because the families" lack of organizing abilities has caused them to become increasingly disempowered. Operating individually and informally, they are no match for schools with million-dollar budgets, planning commissions beholden to powerful development corporations, churches dominated too often by professional clerics (and their career concerns), and social agencies controlled by professionals. The social space in which families can exercise their capacities is becoming increasingly crowded by powerful organizations. If policymakers are to become serious about family empowerment, they must develop strategies to enable families to reacquire some of their lost capacities. In American localities, this requires organizing. Giving families the tools, funds, and legal powers to incorporate family empowerment associations would merely begin to level the playing field on which families have been losing round after round. Overview of the Argument As stated above, a central purpose of this analysis is to restore some precision to the use of the term "empowerment" in the context of public policy design. The analysis dwells in particular on family empowerment, but argues that family empowerment is intrinsically linked to community building. In short, family empowerment would make families into agents of community building. This purpose is pursued first through an examination of the human service "systems reforms" that are creating sweeping changes in the organization of state and local human service systems. These reforms are particularly significant from the standpoint of family empowerment because they make family-centeredness so critical to program redesign. Although they began taking root in early child development policies (partly due to the influence of the holistic, family-centered approach of Head Start), they have begun shaping many other areas of policy as well. These reforms seek to personalize the formal institutions through which health and human service programs have been traditionally delivered. Making such institutions more inclusive of, and responsive toward, families and communities are two of the strategic goals of the reforms. But, this study argues that as the reforms are currently conceived, they will make formal systems more responsive toward families (an admirable goal on its own), but they will not significantly empower them; thus, they fall far short of achieving their aims. To put it metaphorically, the family boat is leaking, the reforms will help make life more tolerable as the waters pour in, and to a certain extent will make them ready to build or acquire more sturdy boats; however, more powerful boats are still needed to help families successfully navigate the turbulent waters swirling around them. The argument has five sections. The first section is an examination of system reforms as they shape policies in several arenas: child care, early health care, the creation of family centers, and the encouragement of community collaborations around children and family issues. It then tries to disentangle the strengths of these reforms, particularly the supportiveness they are encouraging for families, from their weaknesses. The weaknesses derive from a tendency to overstate the potential for empowerment through consumer roles and through collaborations dominated by formal agencies. Moreover, where real empowerment is being realized through such programs, it tends to be isolated in the social arena only; political, economic, and religio-cultural empowerment are largely left outside the domain of the reforms. In addition, many programs, in particular the new family centers, are too quick to equate skill-building with empowerment, neglecting the relational aspect of power. Enhancing parenting skills without the roles and institutions that enable change m a neighborhood or participation in community building is a very limited form of empowerment. After studying the reforms and their relation to family support and family empowerment, the argument moves to an explanation of how the disempowerment of families and the deterioration of communities have been mutually related historical trends. A premise underlying this study's advocacy of family empowerment associations is that families can and must become significant players in the public realm. Prior to the development of the industrial, market economy in the nineteenth century, a seamlessness could be found between family and community life that indeed made it more "natural" for families to interact with and share in the activities of public institutions such as churches, town markets, and local citizen assemblies. Church congregations were congregations of families; through them families often organized the schools, baptized the children, performed the marriages, buried the dead, and engaged in other activities that were both private and public. Moreover, families were economically productive units: they produced food and other goods and sold them through town markets. A seamlessness was present between family life and public economic life as well. Because families were so critical to economic productivity and to integration into the community through the church, they also were critical to helping a man develop political standing in a local assembly. The argument in section II is that the disempowerment of families was due to the usurpation of families' capacities to be significant, public units in the economic, social, political, and religio-cultural realms of local life. The usurping of these capacities by formal organizations cut off families from the public activities in which they had been deeply integrated. These family capacities must be restored, although obviously through different institutions than those commonly found before industrialization. The same processes that drained families of these capacities fragmented and weakened the communities. Section III contains an examination of the implications of this problem statement: policies that seek to strengthen communities will not do so without also reintegrating families into community-building activities. Rebuilding family capacities must be part-and-parcel of policies that seek to rebuild communities. In contrast to the nineteenth century's form of family and community integration, future strategies must be more formal and must be exercised through conscious public action. Family empowerment associations must be buttressed by the full support of public policies. The elements of family empowerment associations are identified in section IV. A case study of a contemporary family center is used to illustrate the potentials and dilemmas in trying to build family empowerment associations directly from formal family centers. The Child Care and Development Block Grant is discussed to illustrate how a current policy can be strong from the standpoint of family support and weak from the standpoint of family empowerment. The purposes and activities of the family empowerment associations needed to realize family empowerment are defined in this section. It also includes a hypothetical scenario of the formation of an autonomous family empowerment association, which builds on the case study of the family center. This serves to further illustrate the potential shape of a family empowerment association. Section V delves into the ways to create a family empowerment association. Conceivably, they could be seeded from existing host organizations such as neighborhood associations and family centers. However, state policies themselves might hold the greatest untapped potential for supporting family empowerment associations. In fact, states are uniquely positioned in American federalism to help create family empowerment associations. A number of possible strategies are outlined, including direct and indirect approaches. The conclusion contains a survey of potential objections to family empowerment associations. The privatism that now characterizes family life tends to limit visions for policy design. The public activities that are necessary for community building are conventionally viewed as needing to take place outside the family. Family empowerment associations must crack this conceptual and practical barrier between families and the public realm, while designing policies to support family empowerment associations should overcome the same barrier—the assumptions of those who design policies. Furthermore, traditional thinking about mediating institutions must be revised to further family empowerment. There is a tendency to lump families and other small institutions into the same category of mediating institutions. This tendency obscures the fact that many small institutions have created barriers to family empowerment: families need new institutions to mediate their interests with them. As depicted in Figure 1 [not available online], the institutional ecology in localities should be rearranged to support family empowerment. Policies can help this occur. A critical middle space must be created between families and the predominant formal organizations through which public policies are generally implemented. In that space, new institutions must be formed that empower families to work jointly to revitalize the capacities that for decades have been drained from them. Family decline has been precipitated in significant fashion by family disempowerment. Reversing the decline will require family empowerment. The New Family Policy Agenda: More Supportive Than Empowering Introduction
Reform Principles Policy Reforms Focusing on Family Support Linking Family Support with Family Empowerment Introduction There is a critical set of reforms taking hold in health and human services. These reforms are being promoted by federal and state policy changes, and are reshaping the ways states in particular reorganize their service systems. These reforms hold great promise for making traditionally rigid, deficit oriented, categorical programs more nurturing and responsive toward families. But, there is a tendency to overstate the potential positive effects of these policies on family empowerment. Distinguishing between family support principles and family empowerment principles can help map future strategies for ensuring that family support policies ultimately lead to family empowerment. The current systems reform agenda that is taking hold in many states will help make education and human service institutions more nurturing and responsive toward families, but on its own will not significantly empower families. The formal organizations at the center of the reforms—schools, social agencies, health agencies—bemoan the weaknesses of families and attribute their own difficulties in achieving positive outcomes to these weaknesses. Ironically, these are the same formal organizations that over time have usurped many of the family's previous capacities. Policy reforms that work through formal service systems may improve the system's supportiveness as they are now organized. But, if policies are to empower families to renew their capacities on a comprehensive scale, they also must aim outside the formal systems to help families build new institutions, referred to below as "family empowerment associations." Policies can help construct an empowering ecology for families through initiatives that would complement the important reforms underway in many states. Although the systems reform agenda will not on its own empower families to exercise their capacities with a renewed vitality, it will present a much more hospitable environment for family empowerment. Therefore, one aim of this monograph is to examine this agenda's potential and limitations for empowering families to shape the conditions in which they nurture their young children, counsel and guide their adolescents, and care for their dependent elders. A review of the policy areas in which reform principles are being adopted can help illustrate the potential and limitations of such initiatives for family empowerment. This analysis has a critical as well as a hopeful thrust: where the limitations of the reforms are not acknowledged, they could inadvertently undermine family empowerment. Making systems more "customer-driven" will not create an effective substitute for an affirmation of family power. Building "seamless" and integrated service systems will not lead to effective substitutes for community building by families. Conflating systems reform with family empowerment and community building could inflate expectations of the reforms and undermine empowerment. Creating a family empowerment and community-building agenda distinctive from, but complementary to, the systems reforms could significantly renew the capacities that have been transferred from families to formal organizations. Reform Principles At the behest of federal policy and changes in state policy, many states are striving to increase the effectiveness of their human service programs, schools, and health systems. A central concern driving the reforms that will hopefully improve the outcomes of services is how best to change the relationships among families, communities, and formal delivery systems. There is a growing consensus that stronger, more mutualistic relationships must be created among these entities. To reform these relationships, states are adopting the following principles as they reorganize their own policymaking structures and reconfigure programs (as summarized in Kordesh and Wheeland, 1993; see also Bruner et al., 1993; Bruner, 1991; Chynoweth and Dyer, 1991; Schorr, 1988): - Policies must become more family-centered, meaning that families, not individuals, must be the primary focus of intervention;
- Policies must become more preventive and less crisis oriented;
- Policies must encourage positive relationships between direct service providers and informal associations in localities;
- Family members must be more involved in policy development and program monitoring;
- Policies must be "decategorized," meaning regulations, eligibility criteria, and other rules must be made more flexible, allowing states (with respect to federal rules) and localities (with respect to state rules) to combine traditionally separate programs, coordinate multiple funding streams, and use resources more creatively;
- Services must be "co-located" in sites accessible to all families in an area; and
- Service providers should develop competencies in working with families of diverse cultures.
The quest for reforms that promote these changes reflects a growing concern about the deterioration of families and informal communities to a point of crisis and about the partial responsibility of program design for that deterioration. Thus, in such traditionally divergent areas of policy as child care, health care, welfare reform, and the long-term care of the elderly, similar themes are emerging as reform agendas are formulated. The Quest for Good Quality in Child Care Parents and communities are increasingly viewed as critical to the development of high quality child care programs. The Child Care and Development Block Grant mandated the issuance of vouchers to parents for the purchase of child care from preferred providers (Kordesh et al., 1991). This emphasis on parent choice stemmed from a widely held but still untested conviction that parents needed to be given more significant roles in the monitoring and enforcement of quality standards. Although it is not clear whether the move to vouchers has in fact affected quality, instituting vouchers necessitated many related administrative changes within the states. Resource and referral programs needed to be expanded. Educational programs for parents about methods for determining the quality of a child care center were strengthened. A more diverse array of formal and informal family-based settings began to receive subsidies. Less conflicting, "seamless" regulations had to be developed across the various major categories of child care (Title XX, Title IV-A, and CCDBG). The definition of child care "quality" itself shows how standards for formal programs are in many ways affirmations (or at times, rediscoveries) of the characteristics of strong families. (For a summary of standards, see Ooms and Herendeen, 1989.) For instance, higher quality programs have been shown to maintain a manageable group size and reasonably small adult-to-child ratios, reproducing the smallness, intimacy, and familiarity common to a healthy family. Skills levels of staff and developmental appropriateness of the curricula reproduce the attentiveness and personalization delivered by nurturing and knowledgeable parents and grandparents in a viable family setting. The importance of caregiver continuity mirrors the stability afforded a child in a committed marriage or at least in a home with a committed single parent. Some research also has shown that higher quality child care programs make good use of other community resources such as libraries, family centers, and health programs. Attentive parents who take their children to parks and libraries and keep them immunized do the same. While the parallels between high quality child care and strong family settings are clear, it is often not easy to establish continuity between child care programs and families. Research also has shown that higher quality settings tend to involve parents in many facets of their programs. However, such involvement has many obstacles. Here, the ironic relationship surfaces between formal organizations and families with respect to child care: child care agencies and programs have grown as families have weakened, often due to economic changes, but the quality of child care varies with the strength of the family's involvement. Healthy families are more capable of positive involvement in child care settings. Policymakers still struggle with this question: how can families be strengthened and child care quality be improved simultaneously when economic forces and institutional barriers seem to be forcing trends in the opposite direction? Using vouchers to select child care providers is only one of many approaches that can be tested by policy reforms to empower parents to strengthen the quality of such care. But choice is a limited and largely untested form of parent empowerment (Kordesh et al., 1991): Parent choice most directly addresses the parent's initial decision about the kind of care to be purchased for the child. It might indirectly strengthen the parent's capacity to be involved with the program in other ways (visiting his or her children, participating on committees or boards, consulting with professional staff, helping as a volunteer), but how I will do so is not yet known. Proponents argue the' the ability to choose another caregiver if the parents are dissatisfied provides them with increasing leverage with the provider; after all, they can place their children elsewhere. Yet, there are more "costs" associated with moving a child from one caregiver to another than with switching hair stylists or grocery stores. What are the limits on the parents' options to leave? What is lost in continuity of care? What policy measures beyond, or in addition to, choice are needed to empower parents to advocate high quality care? The move toward parent choice is an important first step by state and federal policymakers to redress the imbalance of power between parents and the formal child care systems. Raising the quality of child care will require further experimentation aimed at creating stronger, mutual relationships between families and child care providers. Integrated Early Health Care The relationship between families and formal organizations is no less perplexing in health care than in child care. Federal, state, and local officials are striving to make health care for families with young children accessible and responsive to their multiple problems. Much of the reorientation of early health care toward prevention and away from crisis intervention stems from the recognition by health care providers that families must play significant roles in raising healthy children. The irony in the relationship between families and health care providers shares some characteristics with the relationship between families and child care: Families have lost too many of their own health-producing and health care capacities, creating demands that have caused the scope and diversity of formal health care programs to mushroom. Yet, without families viable enough to create healthy ways of living for parents and children, "prevention" promoted through formal health care will not succeed. The move toward integrating health care is driven by recognition that health care systems remain fragmented and inaccessible for many families. Fragmentation has been an enduring problem in American health care, spawning many coordination and integration initiatives. Some of the first efforts at service integration took place in the early nineteenth century in large cities. For example, the purpose of settlement houses was to bring together many services, often delivered by "paraprofessional" staff (usually residents of the neighborhood) into locations suitable and accessible for the poor. Any number of health, social, educational, and political organizing activities could be based in a settlement house. Later, Head Start, the landmark comprehensive early childhood program, stressed combining family-centered health, education, and counseling services for poor families. The Maternal and Infant Care and Children and Youth projects of the 1960s and the Improved Pregnancy Outcome Program of the 1970s also were designed to coordinate multiple programs. Recent efforts to create "one-stop shopping" are part of a long tradition in American policy development that combines piecemeal policymaking with struggles to coordinate the resulting narrowly focused programs (National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality, 1991). As noted in the briefing report for the second Pennsylvania Family Policy seminar, critical elements of the current efforts to integrate early health care (Kordesh et al., 1991) include: - Location of services where the target population lives, works, or studies (locations can include store fronts, housing developments, and high schools);
- Care coordination involving medical and nonmedical services;
- Broadening eligibility to overcome the segmenting effects of categorical programs on families and communities;
- Simplified, "user-friendly" enrollment and application procedures that make access to services easier;
- Making service settings more culturally sensitive and dignified for patients; and
- Building better relationships between patients and health provider teams.
- Home visits by professionals and subsidized transportation for patients or clients to the delivery site;
- Outreach and follow-up to pregnant women, mothers, and young children;
The characteristics that policy reforms are attempting to instill in health systems emphasize traits that are common in strong families and viable communities: personalization, respect for culture, and stable relationships. Family Centers Another thrust in policy development through which the reform agenda is wielding influence is the creation of family centers. The family center is the latest incarnation of the local multi-service centers that have long been utilized to overcome the pressures on families, communities, and social agencies themselves to become fragmented and isolated. The first incarnation of such an agency was the previously mentioned settlement house, one of the earliest of which was the Hull-House created by Jane Addams in Chicago in the 1 880s. Note how Addams' description of Hull-House's activities reflects themes familiar to builders of family centers today (Addams, 1910, pp. 126-127): We early found ourselves spending many hours in efforts to secure support for deserted women, insurance for bewildered widows, damages for injured operators, furniture from the clutches of the installment store. The Settlement is valuable as an information and interpretation bureau. It constantly acts between the various institutions of the city and the people for whose benefit those institutions were erected. The hospitals, the county agencies, and State asylums are often but vague rumors to the people who need them most. Another function of the Settlement to its neighborhood resembles that of the big brother whose mere presence on the playground protects the little one from bullies (emphasis added). Just as contemporary family centers seek to do, settlement houses offered family support programs for mothers and their young children. Although the term "at-risk" was not in vogue as it is today, surely the children described by Addams would have fit the label (1910, pp. 128-129): We early learned to know the children of hard driven mothers who went out to work all day, sometimes leaving the little things in the casual care of a neighbor, but often locking them into their tenement rooms . . . During our first summer an increasing number of these poor little mites would wander into the cool hallway of Hull-House. We kept them there and fed them at noon, in return for which we were sometimes offered a coin which had been held in a tight little fist "ever since mother left this morning to buy something to eat with" . . . Hull-House was thus committed to a day nursery which we sustained for sixteen years in a little cottage on a side street and then in a building designed for its use called the Children's House. It is now carried on by the United Charities of Chicago in a finely equipped building on our block, where the immigrant mothers are cared for as well as the children, and where they are taught the things which will make life in America more possible. Our early day nursery brought us into natural relations with the poorest women of the neighborhood, many of whom were bearing the burden of dissolute and incompetent husbands in addition to the support of their children. Addams' history of Hull-House reminds us of the old tension in American social and health programs between formal and bureaucratic modes of service delivery and informal modes of service delivery. The settlement houses, the multi-service centers, the neighborhood centers that followed them, and the contemporary family centers have all sought to meld the formal and the informal in ways that made services responsive, accessible, and effective. There is a tendency m contemporary rhetoric to sometimes over-emphasize the uniqueness of preventive strategies, holism, neighborhood-based approaches, and the innovativeness of involving parents as partners in service delivery. Creating programs with these elements has long been an aim of local institutions that have grappled with crisis-oriented, bureaucratic programs that have prescribed passive client roles for parents and other members. Many new family centers are being created in schools. Like multi-service centers, schools also have periodically been preferred vehicles for service reforms. As David Tyack writes, the Progressive Period (1890s to World War I) was marked by the advent of school reform as well as the creation of settlement houses (Tyack, 1992, p. 20). . . . activist writers like Jacob Riis, Robert Hunter, and John Spargo cast a bright light on the suffering of children—the wasting of the next generation—and cried out for action. Reformers pressed for school lunches, medical and dental inspections and clinics, classes for handicapped and sick children, vocational guidance and placement, school social workers to counsel wayward youth and to assist their parents, summer schools to provide recreation and learning for urban children in the long hot summers, and child welfare officers to deal with truant and delinquent youth. Some reformers created schools that were social centers, community-based institutions that provided counseling about welfare services, job training, English classes, recreation, crafts, sports and civic instruction for all members of immigrant families in city ghettos. These ideas have been periodically rediscovered, as in the war on poverty of the 1960s. The new aspect of this situation is the states' lead role in promoting and funding school-based family centers. With consistent federal and state support, the quest of reformers in the late twentieth century may be more fully realized than the efforts of their predecessors in the Progressive Period and during the 1960s. Whether based in schools or in other agencies, family centers are being selected increasingly as preferred vehicles for advancing the systems reforms. Family centers strive to encourage services for entire families, rather than just for individuals. They are designed to blend funding from various categorical sources into coordinated interventions for families. By being available for all families in a given locality, they aim to prevent problems rather than to only treat problems that have already occurred. Yet, because they are implemented through the same formal institutions on which the other reforms rely—schools, agencies, housing authorities, child care centers—their success also depends on the institutions that benefited historically from the disempowerment of families. The biases of these institutions come into play in the same patterns exhibited in child care and health care integration: the predominance of the consumer role for families and an orientation toward empowerment limited mainly to advocacy for one's own services. In addition, the biases of these institutions tend to preclude a consideration of family empowerment activities that would involve significant economic, political, and religio-cultural issues. Human Service Partnerships and Collaborations Due to a growing recognition of the interdependence between family viability and the strength of the community, the reform efforts are giving increased support to "community-based" programs. They are also placing increased stress on collaborative grant development and program planning. Yet, rhetoric favoring community-based approaches tends to be vague about the definition of community. One problem with mandating community-based participation is that widespread evidence indicates that most localities—geographic areas in which people live—are no longer communities in any strong sense of the term. It is easier to generate locality-based participation; it is very difficult to generate community-based participation when there is a weak semblance of community to begin with. Yet, the two entities—locality and community—are often conflated in ways that obscure the challenges involved in stimulating viable community building. The tendency to think of community and locality interchangeably can encourage overstatement of the potential for local service integration as a community building activity. Service integration is on its own an important process for improving effectiveness and efficiency. But, it has more to do with administrative processes: linking funding streams, coordinating separate management structures, increasing the effectiveness of case management, and making programs more accessible. On the other hand, community building refers more to the informal and subtle processes of building attachment to a shared vision, creating a sense of common history, strengthening mutual affection, and engaging in actions that bond people with one another and with their place. One can see how community building can complement service integration, but community building is not necessary to make the kinds of administrative reforms required by service integration. In fact, it is sometimes easier for service integration to take place in a locality that is not a strong community: separate administrative units—for instance, a primary health center and a school-based clinic—may actually find creating joint case management and more efficient referral arrangements easier in a locality that is highly fragmented as a community than in a locality that is also a strong community (where more people might want to scrutinize the new arrangements and hold more public discussion of the costs and benefits). Another practice that conflates community with locality is defining local task forces dominated mostly by formal agencies as "community" collaboratives. The problem with defining community in these terms is not only that parents, children, or citizens-at-large are not usually represented in significant proportions on such groups, but that the systems" perspectives define the community. To define a body composed of mostly social agencies, health care delivery institutions, and schools as a community collaborative is to define the community as it is seen from the perspectives of the systems themselves. The predominance of systems perspectives injects familiar biases that lead to practical consequences for policy design. Because of the predominance of health and social agencies in such collaborations, community tends to be defined narrowly in terms of caring and supporting individuals, to the relative exclusion of issues such as generating wealth, building a local capital base, planning for the municipality's land use, or building viable democratic institutions. The focus on caring as the central basis for community also may reflect a reticence to face directly the problem of power, especially in its political and economic manifestations. Granted, caring requires compassion, empathy, and improved collaborative skills, as attested by many documents. However, the capacity to care for people effectively also requires power: Caring communities must be sufficiently powerful to mobilize resources, get the attention of government, bring many interests to the table to create interventions, and eventually build living environments that are healthy for families. Sometimes, rearranging power in a locality is a prerequisite for more effective caring. Yet, some task forces established to foster collaborations around caring are formed as if power arrangements among businesses, schools, agencies, and other major institutions did not impinge upon a community's capacity to care. Inviting a locality's "major players"—influential businesses, schools, agencies, and government bodies—into a new planning body might merely reproduce the same power arrangements that helped create the gaps in caring (for particular groups of families or for particular neighborhoods) in the first place. One further irony reflected in many collaboratives is the reticence to involve religious perspectives without reducing them to merely secular, social perspectives. Ambivalence within a community collaborative toward the role of religion in strengthening community can be ironic: religion stirs deep and powerful spiritual motives for caring, compassion, and sacrifice. Yet, when religious representatives are invited to participate, they are often pressured by the secular biases of many institutions (and the policies that govern them) to leave their most powerful symbols—language, references to sacred literature, prayer—at the door. In short, there is often great pressure upon religious people in community collaboratives to participate as long as they are not overtly religious. While keeping a collaborative free from religious expression and religiously grounded argument may raise the comfort level of professionals from secular institutions, it also may help drain the collaborative of powerful sources of motivation that make sacrifice and commitment to the common good possible. Here too we find formal institutions acquiring more power due to the decline of some aspect of community (in this respect, religious manifestations), but then indirectly suffering the consequences of that decline. Because many localities are woefully lacking as communities, they cannot now provide the necessary political environment, social conditions, and religio-cultural context needed to form powerful community collaboratives capable of significantly changing harmful environments. Arguing that the above traits are weaknesses of some collaboratives should not obscure the fact that in many respects, significant advances are being made in studying and promoting them (Armstrong, 1992; Chynoweth, 1994; Hawkins and Catalano, 1993; Melaville, Blank, and Asayesh, 1993; National Association of State Boards of Education, 1991; Sugarman, 1991). It is argued here, however, that many of the emerging collaboratives tend to exhibit these weaknesses because policies tend to reinforce them. They do so because of the reliance in large part on traditional formal institutions for structuring the local planning bodies and for implementation. Confusing community with locality bears directly on the development of young people. The absence of community in a locality helps explain the problems of particular age groups, such as young adolescents. David Hamburg points out that early adolescence is a critical turning point in the life of a young person. Moving from a family-based life into a life based more outside of the home makes the presence of a viable community particularly critical for healthy development during adolescence (Hamburg as quoted in Crouter et al., 1992, p. 3): Adolescence is typically characterized by exploratory behavior, much of which is developmentally appropriate and socially adaptive for most young people. However, many of these behaviors carry high risks . . . There is a crucial need to help adolescents at this early stage to acquire durable self-esteem, flexible and inquiring habits of mind, reliable and relatively close human relationships, a sense of belonging in a valued group, and a sense of usefulness in some way beyond the self. Young people entering middle schools or junior high schools are often confronted by conflicting value systems, weak understanding of moral traditions, a fragile connection to a shared history with others, confusing messages about the future, and fragile and unstable connections with others. The census of community around early adolescence has erupted into many social and health problems that have been well documented: growing suicide rates, high dropout rates, high rates of pregnancy, rising incidences of HIV infection, and rising rates of violent criminal offenses. This litany of problems is not meant to convey hopelessness. The deeper problems underlying community breakdown can be addressed effectively by states. First, however, they must be recognized and understood more clearly, and then connected to tangible policy development at the state and local levels. Local collaboratives must be more cognizant of the fact that while addressing history and constructing shared visions, collaborative local planning among "major stakeholders" with interests in families and adolescents primarily as consumers and clients will not revitalize community, nor will it provide the foundations necessary for healthy development in early adolescence. Families must be engaged in their productive and decision making capacities. Family support must be complemented by family empowerment. Policy Reforms Focusing on Family Support Within the broad principles guiding policy development outlined above, an increasingly influential vector of reform focuses on family support themes. This critical element of the reform movement shows great promise for humanizing delivery systems and making relationships between providers and families more responsive and caring. Family support cuts across all of these areas of policy and others as well. Like the family-centered efforts mentioned earlier, family support attempts to renew some of the strengths traditionally associated with strong families and communities. Judy Carter describes "family resource programs" as they embody family support principles (Carter in Bruner et al., 1993, Appendix): In many ways, family resource programs are old-fashioned. What they do for families is the same thing that once was done by churches and extended families and networks of friends in small towns. They provide a sense of belonging, a sense of safety, a knowledge that there is support and assistance whenever you need it . . . Family resource programs today contain elements of familiar antecedents: settlement houses, parent education efforts, especially as they have been encouraged by Head Start, and self-help groups. Carter stresses family support as an approach to serving families that can be adopted by many different programs: "Three basic elements distinguish a family support approach from other approaches: the nature of the relationship between 'the system' and the families or children it serves, the intentional coordination and blending of categorical services both public and private, and a reliance on the resources of the participants themselves" (Carter, ibid.). One of the changes brought by a family support approach to federal and state policy development is a required blending of various programs to address families rather than individuals. For instance, the family support approach has had significant influence on the design of welfare reform initiatives. The logic of welfare reform articulated in the federal Family Support Act demanded that welfare be reconstituted from being mainly an income transfer program to a complex, family-centered program integrating cash transfers with job training, education subsidies, child care, child support, and other services. "Two-generation" strategies, pioneered by the Denver Family Opportunity Program and others, as well as the comprehensive Family Development and Self-Sufficiency program in Iowa, are leading examples of welfare reform initiatives that have adopted family support principles (Bruner and Berryhill, 1992; Smith, Blank, and Collins, 1992). Although the family support movement has evolved largely from the field of children and family services, the same principles are being promoted by reformers in the field of aging. For instance, in the arena of long-term care, despite the many challenges presented by frail grandparents, parents, and spouses, families are still the primary caregivers. Recognizing this fact, states are working to decategorize funding within the field of aging policies to make programs flexible enough to support family-based care. Long-term care insurance is being regulated to underwrite family-based services. Respite programs for family caregivers are increasing. Home visiting is widely utilized. Some states fund locally based associations to organize block groups to improve neighborhood based care for elders at home. Due to recently passed federal legislation, states will be pressed to further define their methods for applying family support approaches to serving children and families. The Family Preservation and Support Services Act passed by Congress in August 1994, authorizes $930 million over five years to help states expand family support and family preservation programs. Eligible family preservation services can include: - Programs to help children reunite with their biological families, or to place them for adoption;
- Programs to prevent placement of children in foster care, including intensive family preservation services;
- Programs to provide follow-up services to families after a child has been returned from foster care;
- Respite care to provide temporary relief for parents and other caregivers (including foster parents); and
- Services to improve parenting skills.
Eligible family support services must be community-based and must: - Promote the well-being of children and families;
- Increase the strength and stability of families (including adoptive, foster, and extended families);
- Increase parents' confidence and competence;
- Provide children with a stable and supportive family environment; and
- Enhance child development.
As states respond to these new federal initiatives, they will continue looking to organizations such as the Family Resource Coalition for guidance. In addition, many will study the efforts of Kentucky, Maryland, and other states upon whose initiatives the legislation was partially modeled. Linking Family Support With Family Empowerment The notable advances being achieved in family support approaches contrast with the lag in both defining and conceiving family empowerment approaches. Family empowerment tends to be defined narrowly, in relation to consumer or client roles, or with respect to nurturing and caring roles. Family empowerment from the consumer standpoint entails giving families more input into the services they might need or into the design of programs that might serve them. The latter notions of empowerment are important and legitimate. Research demonstrates that such consumer empowerment will be critical to improving the effectiveness of programs. But, empowerment through strong consumer roles only begins to touch on the kinds of empowerment needed by families if they are to be strengthened to fulfill their capacities. Effectively linking family support with family empowerment through mutually enhancing strategies would first entail differentiating the two potential thrusts of public policy: family support focuses on humanizing formal systems and agencies, while family empowerment focuses on creating institutions through which families shape the conditions in which they live. Table 1 attempts to illustrate the differences between family support and family empowerment. There is empowering potential within family support programs: social capacities such as child care and teaching can be practiced by parents in parent education programs such as Parents as Teachers and HIPPY. But, most settings in which family support is delivered are constrained by funding, political constraints, and secularization from venturing into other critical dimensions of family empowerment. For many families in crisis, family support programs may be needed before family empowerment is possible. Thus, once the distinctions between the two are identified, the critical path for transition from support to empowerment can be isolated. Table 1
Comparative Characteristics of Family Support and Family Empowerment: Different But Complimentary Thrusts | Family Support Emphases | Family Empowerment Emphases | | Focus on social capacities and caring | Focus on exercising political, economic, and religio-cultural capacities | | Families as participatory customers | Families as collaborative producers of goods | | Teaches social, personal skills | Builds roles, institutions through which families exercise capacities | | Community is resource for families | Families help build community | | Systems nurture families | Families strengthen system effectiveness | | Services delivered with respect for diverse family cultures | Family cultures penetrate and normalize systems | | Services designed to prevent family crises | Family capacities prevent endless system expansion |
R. Kordesh, 1994 Dunst et al. have developed a framework that can help map the transition from family support to family empowerment. Their "enablement" model for helping families focuses on identifying, affirming, and building up each person's skills and competencies. They argue that family enablement must be seen as a process that (Dunst et al., 1988, p. 44): . . . raises the likelihood that a person will become empowered. The term "enablement" reflects the underlying rationale of the model, namely, that the help giver creates opportunities for competencies to be acquired or displayed by the help seeker . . . The help giver does not mobilize resources on behalf of the help seeker, but rather creates opportunities for the help seeker to acquire competencies that permit him or her to mobilize sources of resources and support necessary to cope, adapt, and grow in response to life's main challenges. In this view of enablement, the service system is changed through alteration of the help giver's stance toward the help seeker. The help giver becomes focused on capacities as well as needs: "It is not just an issue of whether needs are met but rather that (the) manner in which mobilization of resources and support occurs that is a major determinant of enabling and empowering families" (Dunst et al., ibid.). The Cornell Empowerment Group also has devoted considerable effort to studying the link between family support and empowerment. One of their contributions has been a definition of the characteristics of the "transforming role" a professional help giver can play toward a help seeker. They apply their empowerment perspective to a wide variety of family support programs, beginning with the direct service relationships, but going beyond the direct service aspects to encourage community change activities as well (Barr and Cochran, 1992; Cochran, 1991; Cornell Empowerment Group, 1989; Deann, 1991). In an article published in the Cornell group's Networking Bulletin, Weiss addresses directly the strengths and weaknesses of the individualistic "parent as consumer" emphasis of many family support programs. She argues that "historically, there has been less recognition that inequality of opportunity and achievement can stem from systemic barriers which are not removed by efforts to change individuals alone" (Weiss, 1990, p. 4). Pletcher and Gordon (1988, pp. 116-118) co-authored a case study published in Dunst et al. that illustrates how family enablement can lead to mobilizing resources by the family seeking help. According to the case study, "Mary," whose daughter was experiencing developmental delays, was assisted by a family support program in locating an early intervention program for her little girl. However, through her contact with the agency that arranged the referral, Mary also became interested in a resource exchange program that had been organized by a number of families through assistance from the family support agency. A staff member helped her identify products and services her family needed as well as products and services the family could offer to other families through the network. Her needs included finding more time to spend with her husband, acquiring more transportation to run errands, and obtaining assistance in repairing the steps and porch of their mobile home. Her family's assets included housecleaning ability, yard work skills, baby sitting, and the ability to provide companionship. After having the initial exchanges with other families mediated by the program staff, Mary now arranges these exchanges herself using the network directory. This brief story illustrates how family support can seed the beginnings of family empowerment. A woman came with needs, had them addressed competently, and then was helped to use her own assets to get other needs met. But, further empowerment was not structured by the program, nor is it structured by most family support policies as they are currently conceived. While admirable and effective to a degree, informal networking among families may help them make better use of their current resources, but it is not as effective in expanding their wealth, consolidating their political influence, or developing spiritual bonds that solidify them as Communities. In other words, there are levels of empowerment that even the most advanced family support programs do not usually structure. It is entirely conceivable that the families in the resource exchange network could have formed a community organization or community development corporation on their own. But, this is the point: most such groups never do, and that they do not is at least partly due to the fact that policies do not generally support such forms of empowerment. One of the main reasons is that the formal organizations through which most policies are administered are generally not interested in that level of family empowerment. To its credit, this enablement surely sets an empowering process in motion. Because this process mobilizes the productive and creative capacities of families, it is intrinsically a community building activity. Turning mere localities into communities capable of sustaining families must become both a family empowerment process and a community building process. Family support services as they are usually structured—making human services and the policies that regulate them more responsive and caring toward whole families—may be necessary prior to family empowerment, but these approaches are not in themselves family empowerment processes. Clearer designs for what community building through family empowerment would involve in practice must be formulated if effective family empowerment policies are to be put in place. The fact that family support approaches are currently more clearly defined in policies than family empowerment approaches is partly a result of the ironic relationship between families and formal organizations alluded to earlier: formal organizations that have grown by usurping the family's functions should not be expected to lead the effort to restore those functions. Family empowerment must emerge through a democratic process of institution building that has a base outside the formal systems in order to give families leverage with formal institutions and more opportunities to shape their economic and social conditions. Whereas family support programs sometimes seed the beginning stages of empowerment processes within school systems, health clinics, and other formal organizations, there is a need for an institutional base for families beyond those systems to help empowerment realize its full potential. Renewed and systematic attention must be given to creating a strong layer of democratic, voluntary associations between families and formal organizations. Examples of associations that could be adapted to this purpose may be found in many localities, but policy strategies are needed to construct this more robust field of institutions between families and formal service delivery systems. Index Preface
Overview: What Does Family Empowerment Mean?
I. The New Family Policy Agenda: More Supportive Than Empowering
II. To Empower Families
III. Family Empowerment and Community Building
IV. Family Empowerment Associations
V. Where to Begin?
Conclusion: Repositioning Families into the Missing Middle
References
Appendix
Back to Families and Gender Index
|
