Reunification Services

Using a family therapy model including dyadic work with infants, A Better Way’s Family Reunification Program is designed to develop and maintain better child-parent relationships, improve attachment, and ameliorate presenting symptoms and enhance overall family functioning. For families in which children have been removed due to safety concerns, A Better Way, works with the birth family and Child Protective Services to assure that the family has the support they need to meet goals that are required before they can reunify with their children. Whether or not reunification is the outcome, A Better Way helps parents and children achieve their optimal level of connection and relationship.

Specific Program Objectives for Family Reunification Program

• To develop  parenting skills
• To improve communication between family members
• To facilitate a smooth transition in cases where reunification is possible, or to improve
  stability in foster and adoptive placements
• To resolve underlying issues of concern for both children and parents
• To enable the family to remediate intergenerational trauma, depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and to promote parental awareness of how these issues can impact a child’s development and well being.

Therapeutic Visitation 

One of the main approaches used in the Reunification Program is Therapeutic visitation.  This is an opportunity for parents to spend time with their children while progressing toward reunification.  Each therapeutic visitation is supervised by a therapist who works with parents and social services to develop guidelines and goals for visits. Goals are designed to assure basic safety, identify and develop parents’ strengths, ameliorating any parenting concerns identified by Social Services, and presenting parents with the opportunity to demonstrate improvements that will increase their chances of reunifying with their children. The therapist employs family therapy and dyadic treatment approaches that may include modeling, role-play, problem solving and teaching skills such as anger management, effective communication styles, and appropriate discipline techniques. Parents work with the therapist to decrease undesirable interaction between parent and child, and to practice new strategies in responding to the child. As a team, the parent(s) and child(ren) also develop contingency planning for future situations to improve parent-child relationship and family functioning. The therapist reports all observed improvements, progress and concerns to the Social Services worker on a regular basis.