Additional Family Supports
In addition to Better Together, the Division for Children, Youth and Families offers partnerships to support families on engagement, reunification, and parenting success.
Father Engagement Action Team (FEAT)
FEAT is a multidisciplinary action team that includes DCYF field staff, fathers, mothers, service providers, community partners and other stakeholders.
The primary goal of FEAT is to build agency capacity to positively identify, locate, engage, empower, and include fathers in the work the Division does with children, youth and families.
FEAT members meet monthly to work on projects which may include developing products (Insert a link to FEAT one page here) , planning panels with fathers in the District Offices, or developing training sessions to build workforce capacity to more effectively work with fathers.
Those interested in more information about FEAT or fatherhood work can contact FEAT Co-Leads at FEAT@dhhs.nh.gov.
Road Map to Reunification
We partner with colleagues to improve reunification outcomes for children and their families. This effort includes partnering with colleagues leading the implementation of the Road Map to Reunification family team meeting model. This model includes icebreaker meetings between birth parents and foster parents. We work collaborative to promote this model and to create spaces for birth parents and foster parents to connect, share experiences, honor each other’s perspectives, recognize and unpack the barriers, and learn ways to overcome them to increase and improve shared parenting for the well-being of children and youth.
Those interested in learning more about Road Map can speak with their DCYF worker.
Strength to Succeed
We partner with two community based agencies, Granite Pathways and the Gorham Family Resource Center, to offer peer support services to parents currently involved with child protection.
Strength to Succeed is an innovative service model for parents involved with DCYF and impacted by substance related disorders, mental health, or engaged in chronic neglecting of their children. The core innovation is that this model relies on "peer support” by people with lived experience to instill hope, facilitate change, and strengthen parental capacity. Strength to Succeed hires, trains, and matches "Parent Partners", who are caregivers with prior child welfare involvement, to serve as "recovery coaches" and “family peer support specialists” to parents and relative caregivers newly involved with DCYF and needing recovery supports and/ or a helping hand.
Parent Partners provide one on one support to parents and relative caregivers nurturing their hope, guiding them on how to navigate DCYF services, and helping them access resources to meet concrete immediate needs.
This service model is now available for families in all of the DCYF regional offices and the scope has also been expanded to include families indicated for chronic neglect and/ or mental health. Early data and feedback from families receiving this service indicate that it does empower parents to make changes increasing timely reunifications and improving other child welfare outcomes.
Parents currently involved with DCYF who want to receive peer support can speak with their DCYF worker and request to be matched to a Parent Partner.