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Family Options |
In our Family Options program, qualified social workers administer Family Preservation, Family Options Reunification and Family Options Reunification Assessment services. Our guiding ideals tell us that it is usually best for children to grow up with their own families and for families to learn how to handle their own problems. Family Options is not a cure for the struggles of family life. Instead, it teaches, challenges, and helps families to learn the skills they need to survive.
With our FAMILY PRESERVATION services, we offer intensive in-home family crisis intervention and life-skills education services. These are designed to prevent situations where children have to be separated from their birth families and also to reduce placements of children into state-funded foster, group or institutional care. Families who have failed all other community programs come to us through the Department of Human Resources (DHR). DHR workers have determined that out-of-home placement is the next step for one or more of the referred family’s children. Services are provided without regard to income and at no cost to the families.
A family receives FAMILY OPTIONS REUNIFICATION services when the children are already in out-of-home care. In these cases, those who are involved in developing a family’s individualized service plan (ISP) have decided that reunification is the best goal. Through Family Options Reunification, we build on the progress made during separation. We help families to achieve stability and to learn new skills that ensure the safety of their children. Our goals are to reduce barriers that may keep the children from returning home, to assist in transitioning the children back home, and to assist the family in developing a plan that will help keep the family together.
FAMILY OPTIONS REUNIFICATION ASSESSMENT services assist DHR in making permanency decisions through an intensive family assessment. The assessment period lasts up to 30 days and ends when our Family Specialist has gathered enough information to make one or more of a set of recommendations to a family’s ISP team. We will either refer a family to Family Options Reunification services or recommend an alternate permanency goal such as adoption, long-term foster care or independent living.
Staff works closely with county Mental Health Departments, Alabama State Department of Education School Districts, municipal and county court systems, and private counselors and therapists.
We offer this program in the following locations: