Community Based Services
Pinebrook offers an array of community-based programs designed to provide assistance to families in their homes and throughout their community. By providing services in this manner, they are more accessible and effective and ultimately more likely to either prevent the need for out-of-home placement of children or facilitate successful family reunification for children who are in an out-of-home placement. Community-Based Programs include:- Family Life Education (Individual and Psychoeducational Groups)
- Transportation and Family Visitation
Family Life Education
The Family Life Education program is designed to provide a supportive, shared learning experience to help families better understand and deal with problems of family living, promote the parenting skills development/enhancement necessary to maximize the strengths of those parenting or preparing to parent, and to respect the uniqueness and integrity of each family.
These services are provided in group settings throughout the community or in individual sessions in the family’s own home and address the skill-development needs of parenting adults, pregnant and/or parenting teens, including those incarcerated, in substance abuse treatment/recovery, those with intellectual limitations or mental health illness, parents with limited English proficiency or speak Spanish predominantly.
With an emphasis on promoting growth and personal development in the area of responsible parenting and other life-skills training, topics are presented through structured activities with the provision of information using handouts, worksheets, educational videos, and modeling of appropriate behavior.
The evidence-based Nurturing Parenting curriculum is used with all participants. Sessions cover topics such as:
- The Basics of Child Development
- Feelings
- Self-Esteem
- Communication and Problem Solving
- Managing Stress
- Guiding Behavior/Discipline Techniques
- Establishing Family Routines and Structure
In addition, outcome measures are used to assess the skill growth of participants in various areas of parenting.
Click here to view Pinebrook's Individual Family Life Education Parenting Classes Brochure. To learn more about our Family Life Education Services, please contact Michael Daniels, Program Supervisor by phone (610) 432-3919 or by email at .
Transportation and Family Visitation Program (TVP)
The Family Visitation/Transportation Program is a collaborative program designed to provide transportation to and supervision of visitation between children in substitute care and their non-custodial parents or other relatives. This is accomplished by:
- providing transportation for the children and/or families to designated places for their visits. These could include the biological family’s residence, a relative’s home, a Pinebrook Family Services or County Children and Youth offices, a residential facility, or other specified locations, including sites outside the family’s county of residence. Visits can occur during weekdays, weeknights, holidays and weekends at a time mutually agreed upon by Pinebrook, the Children and Youth agency and the family.
- supervising or monitoring the visit and making appropriate interventions throughout the visit to ensure the emotional and physical safety of the participants. If close supervision of a family were not warranted, staff would nevertheless remain in close proximity to the visit site to be available to the family and children, if needed.
Additional support is offered to families through a program of “facilitative supervision” that would include parenting skills education, coaching and modeling of appropriate parental behavior as well as visit reports and court testimony.
Click here to view Pinebrook's Transportation and Visitation Program Brochure. For more information, please contact Courtney Fein, Program Supervisor, at 610-559-8151 or email .
