October 8-10, 2024: The Agenda

Loved the keynote and want to go deeper? Ebony will be hosting this follow up break-out session to dive deeper into the content, allow you some space for integrating the ideas, and interacting with one another around it.

In this session, we will explore the critical role attachment plays in a child’s development. We will delve into the formation and impact of insecure and secure attachment relationships and provide strategies for improving existing relationships. We will also discuss how professionals can support families in developing secure attachment relationships, from understanding attachment theory to identifying protective factors and promoting positive interactions. Finally, we will highlight how attachment is a lifelong process and provide strategies for improving existing attachment relationships.

This session is also presented in Spanish at the same time – see “Comprender el papel fundamental de los vínculos emocionales” below.

Join members of the HFA National Office’s Parent Advisory Committee as they share their stories of parenting, HFA, and finding their way to parent leadership. Each session will feature different Parent Advisory members and their unique journeys.

Many organizations, home visiting programs, and even individuals still grapple with the “hidden curriculum”—those unspoken or implicit messages, values, and expectations that can quietly reinforce inequities. This session will explore how the hidden curriculum operates in professional settings and within home visiting services, subtly yet significantly shaping our experiences and those of the families we partner with.

You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of these hidden dynamics and practical tips for addressing them. By bringing these hidden aspects to light, we can create more inclusive and supportive environments.

Want to join in a brainstorm? This hands-on session will start with some updates related to the HFA Evidence of Effectiveness, share information about current federal research studies the model is participating in and then will invite you to contibute your perspectives around future research into the model. Come with your curiosity and be ready to think with others across the network about the direction we should head as we build an HFA research agenda together.

En esta sesión, exploraremos el papel fundamental que juega el apego en el desarrollo de un niño. Profundizaremos en la formación y el impacto de las relaciones de apego seguras e inseguras y proporcionaremos estrategias para mejorar las relaciones existentes. También discutiremos cómo los profesionales pueden ayudar a las familias a desarrollar relaciones de apego seguras, desde comprender la teoría del apego hasta identificar factores protectores y promover interacciones positivas. Finalmente, resaltaremos cómo el apego es un proceso que dura toda la vida y brindaremos estrategias para mejorar las relaciones de apego existentes.

For an English description, see “Understanding the Critical Role of Emotional Bonds” description above.

In this session attendees will participate in a reflection about tools and strategies that can help bring changes in our nervous system, to help us stay in the moment and heal. We will focus on the mind-body connection and how we can make changes to our nervous systems to help us be fully present in our work. regulate ourselves and manage stress.

In this interactive session the Prevent Child Abuse America research team will share findings from a current study of how family friendly policies affect rates of child abuse and neglect and intimate partner violence. Session attendees will join in a discussion about policies such as childcare subsidies and think together about how the findings can be applied to HFA work. Join in this opportunity to partner to translate research to practice.

Did you know that there is a framework for healthy attachment that can be applied to ANY human relationship? Whether it’s between a parent and a child, between a home visitor and a parent, or between supervisor and home visitor, CHEERS is YOUR tool to get a glimpse at how we are showing up for one another in those relationships! Join us on a journey into the world of partnering with others at home, in the office, and beyond!

Do you feel like you are not yet sure if you are doing this correctly? Do you wonder how to best support your staff who use the FROG Scale and how to document their support? Does it feel like you are just holding on by your fingertips? Let’s hop into those murky waters together and learn some tips and strategies to make your role easier! At the end of the session, we will also dip our toes into Service Planning.

This workshop will be presented in Spanish and will help Spanish-speaking home visitors explore culturally responsive strategies for approaching family goals with immigrant families and families who have experienced trauma. In cultures that are more collective in mindset, like the cultures of origin of many of our immigrant families, individual goal setting may be less common. In fact, some languages lack words that can be directly translated as a “goal” in the way they are used by the dominant English-speaking culture in the United States. Further, families who have experienced high levels of trauma may have had limited experience setting and achieving goals and may struggle to see how the process is relevant or useful to them. This presentation, offered by a presenter with lived experience as an immigrant and professional experience as a home visitor and supervisor, will offer concrete techniques for home visitors to help develop reachable goals with families, and attendees will be encouraged to draw upon their own cultural context in considering the best ways to approach Family Goals with the families they serve.

Este taller se presentará en español y ayudará a los visitadores domiciliarios hispanohablantes a explorar estrategias culturalmente sensibles para abordar las metas familiares con familias inmigrantes y familias que han experimentado traumas. En culturas que tienen una mentalidad más colectiva, como las culturas de origen de muchas de nuestras familias inmigrantes, el establecimiento de metas individuales puede ser menos común. De hecho, algunos idiomas carecen de palabras que puedan traducirse directamente como “meta” en la forma en que se usa en la cultura dominante en los Estados Unidos. Además, las familias que han experimentado altos niveles de trauma pueden haber tenido una experiencia limitada en el establecimiento y logro de metas y pueden tener dificultades para ver cómo el proceso es relevante o útil para ellos. Esta presentación, ofrecida por un presentador con experiencia vivida como inmigrante y experiencia profesional como visitador domiciliario y supervisor, ofrecerá técnicas concretas para que los visitadores domiciliarios ayuden a desarrollar metas alcanzables con las familias y se alentará a los asistentes a recurrir a su propio contexto cultural al considerar las mejores formas de abordar las Metas Familiares con las familias.

Join PCA Chapter staff from Arizona, Oregon and South Carolina to learn about the HFA-Chapter relationships in these three states, how they have evolved and strengthened over time, with ideas others can use to increase HFA capacity and sustainability.

With:

• Claire Louge, PCA Arizona
• Nicole Cunningham, PCA Oregon
• Cathy Ramage, PCA South Carolina
• Stacy Rease, PCA South Carolina

The COIVD-19 pandemic amplified discrimination and disparities in prenatal healthcare for birthing persons from marginalized groups. This presentation will share parent perspectives on the experiences of discrimination from prenatal and natal care providers during the pandemic and highlight challenges, expectations, and realities across diverse identities. The presentation will explore the impact of all this on the home-visiting relationship and recommendations for fostering a more equitable and compassionate prenatal and natal health landscape.

In this session, we will discuss various skills to promote positive parent-child interactions and help caregivers build protective factors for their families. We will delve into the impact that play can have on parent-child relationships and child development and provide tips for facilitating play-based activities. We will also emphasize the importance of being strengths-based and asking open-ended questions, offering examples of each of these skills. Finally, we’ll share techniques for promoting engagement and brain rewiring among families impacted by substance use disorders, mental health disorders, or dual disorders.

This session is also presented in Spanish at the same time. See “Poner las relaciones entre padres e hijos en el centro de las visitas domiciliarias” below.

Can documentation change practice? It can! Attendees in this session will learn how an HFA site developed a new home visit record format and how it changed everything. Documentation can support sites in Quality Assurance and Continuous Quality Improvement projects in achieving accreditation. Making changes to a home visit note also changed how Family Support Specialists managed their time, how they thought about family progress, how they made use of supervision, and how it limited staff exposure to secondary trauma. From a supervisor’s perspective, it also had impacts on the supervisor’s knowledge of the families, on staff burnout, and seeing home visitor strengths and capacities. Is it time to look at your home visit note and open up to transformation at your site?

Did the keynote from Anthony Barrows get your wheels turning about intersectional professionals in HFA? Do you wonder if you might be an intersectional professional? Join this session with members of the HFA National Office as we keep the conversation going. You will join in an activity to reflect on your own life experiences and what this brings to your work, and we will share resources for you to begin the conversation back at your site related to our own identities as intersectional professionals. We will also hear from an HFA site about their approach to hiring former HFA families so we can reflect on the potential challenges, biases, and benefits they have encountered. If you are an HFA parent, join us in thinking about what it takes to move into a role at an HFA program, either in parent leadership or maybe even getting hired!

Sites within the Healthy Families Indiana Multi-Site System have an active role in system leadership. The committee structure and the way that staff at sites work in conjunction with the Central Administration means that sites don’t just have the chance to provide feedback into how the system works, but are an active part in developing pollices, practices and system decision-making. Join this session to learn about the committees and how they work together to lead to a strong state system of HFA sites.

En esta sesión, discutiremos varias habilidades para promover interacciones positivas entre padres e hijos y ayudar a los cuidadores a desarrollar factores de protección para sus familias. Profundizaremos en el impacto que el juego puede tener en las relaciones entre padres e hijos y en el desarrollo infantil y brindaremos consejos para facilitar actividades basadas en el juego. También enfatizaremos la importancia de basarnos en las fortalezas y hacer preguntas abiertas, ofreciendo ejemplos de cada una de estas habilidades. Finalmente, compartiremos técnicas para promover la participación y la reconfiguración del cerebro entre familias afectadas por trastornos por uso de sustancias, trastornos de salud mental o trastornos duales

Have you ever felt challenged when trying to decide the “right” score in a FROG Scale domain? Been unsure about how to score situations that don’t quite fit the Scoring Guide? Want more clarity about how to discuss scoring differences in supervision? Then this is the workshop for you! Join Laura Shoaf, HFA’s Senior Principal Trainer, to explore the balance of flexibility and objectivity in FROG Scale scoring. Supervisors and direct service staff will consider common challenges, get hands-on practice, and explore strategies for making scoring decisions clearer.

Dr. Bruce Perry has helped us understand that we all thrive from our relational connections. Engaging with others that make us feel safe and that we belong allows us to regulate and access our prefrontal cortex to think, learn, and grow better. In this session, we will think about regulation in the workplace and how working toward wellness in relationships will lead to better program outcomes and healthy and safe families. We will identify strategies to approach self-care and regulation differently to support ourselves and our teams.

Join members of the HFA National Office’s Parent Advisory Committee as they share their stories of parenting, HFA, and finding their way to parent leadership. Each session will feature different Parent Advisory members and their unique journeys.

The HFA Reflective Strategies are strength-based, trauma-informed tools that can be used within the context of any relationship – including supervision! They each share the common purpose of regulation and attunement because a regulated brain is a brain that can reason, engage in critical and creative thinking, and plan for the future. This session will focus on the use of Reflective Strategies to address or promote common themes that may come up for supervisors.

When it comes to the Family Goal Plan, it can be easy for the FSS and Supervisor to focus on the results- did the parent meet the goal? Did they take some of the planned steps? In this presentation, you will be invited to look differently at goals and to consider the actions, not the outcome. We all grow and change, even when things don’t go as planned! Supervisors and direct service staff will get a chance to think of the opportunities across the whole process, from problem-solving to overcoming barriers. By partnering with the family to take the lead, they can pivot, reflect, and adapt to what they learn along the way, irrespective of the outcomes. This holistic approach not only fosters growth but also fosters resilience in the face of challenges.

En esta sesión, exploraremos algunas de las partes que hacen que la supervisión del personal bilingüe sea un desafío. Va más allá de hablar español, hay consideraciones para la cultura (la tuya y la de tu personal), creando un espacio reflexivo para considerar las tensiones adicionales de apoyar a las familias cuando no pueden acceder a todos los servicios, ayudar al personal a mantenerse en sus carriles, comprender los matices de la interpretación y cómo detectar nuestros sesgos/prejuicios. Profundizaremos en la promoción de la cultura del personal y las familias y también consideraremos cómo obtenemos apoyo.

In this session, we will explore some of the parts that make supervising bilingual staff challenging. It goes beyond speaking Spanish, there are considerations for culture (yours and your staff’s), creating reflective space to consider the additional stresses of supporting families when they cannot access all services, helping staff to stay in their lanes,  understanding the nuances of interpreting and how to spot our biases. We will delve into promoting the culture of staff and families and consider how we get support too.

This presentation is for those who are looking for innovative ways to help families who have positive scores on depression screens. We will focus on families who are resistant to care because of previous negative experiences and/or families who are unable to access existing care because of a lack of insurance coverage, transportation, or providers who can provide services in their native language. We will discuss how our program has started to address these challenges and share examples of ways one direct service staff person helps Spanish-speaking families obtain care. This panel discussion will feature our program manager, site counselor, and bi-lingual family support specialist.

In this workshop, AAP-CA3 will tell the story of our journey to utilize the parallel process in practice across all roles and relationships.  Since the pandemic, our systems and nation have faced increasingly stressful circumstances from fatal illness, racial reckoning, and political violence. While these stressors were not new for many staff and families in our programs, there was now an open space for dialogue and reflection on how to make changes to systemic barriers exacerbating the stressors.

These issues coincided with the need for programs to shift from in-person to virtual, which added barriers to building attachment elements, including safety, predictability, comfort, and pleasure in our multi-site system.

As witnesses and participants of these experiences, the Healthy Families San Diego Central Administration team began to challenge traditional ways of engaging, often rooted in systemic barriers, to rebuild attachment elements and elevate staff strengths. This shift required considering perspectives across the parallel process, incorporating the diverse needs of unique staff and roles, and uplifting the platinum rule – “treating others as they would want to be treated.” We will share examples of changes to help you determine how to shift your practice or practices within, regardless of where you fit in the parallel process.

In this presentation, we will:

• Demonstrate how Bruce Perry’s elements of attachment, safety, predictability, comfort, and pleasure provide a framework for supporting staff across the parallel process.
• Recognize opportunities to increase both engagement and a sense of belonging for staff in HFA programs and multi-site systems.
• Highlight how incorporating the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging can address the varying needs of systems members to improve model implementation and services.
• Explore opportunities and considerations for implementing similar approaches to the participant’s role.

Join a long-standing HFA site to learn about the ways that they have approached collecting family feedback over the years and their efforts towards their 2024 goal of elevating parent voice in their program. The presenters will share strategies, ideas, and resources for sites and lessons learned from their successes and their struggles. Ever wondered what to do with feedback from families? Attendees will have a chance to share recommendations and what has worked for them, and they will collaborate with the presenters to follow up after gathering feedback and making space for parents to step into leadership roles.

Have you ever felt that Service Plans feel like another “thing” we had to complete and check off the list? Join program leaders from a large site to hear all about the journey their team has been on related to service planning. They recognized that they wanted to make a change from service planning as a chore, to making Service Plans into a critical tool in their work with families. They learned a lot over the years, including how to individualize plans, the supervisor’s role in supporting the FSS, and how to “work through” the Service Plan and use it as a tool to plan home visits. And maybe most importantly, ho the service planning process has helped staff and supervisors have meaningful relatinships across teh parallel process. Are you ready to feel great about Service Plans? This is the session for you.

This presentation will focus on how to best prepare yourself, your site, and your families and the care that is needed in the aftermath of a disaster.

Join us and share ideas of what it looks like to prepare for a natural disaster as well as the aftermath and recovery process. Learn about the support from the National Office and the resources we have collected both from national disaster relief entities and from our sites and their firsthand experiences.

Warning: We recognize this topic may trigger many; whether you and your community experienced a natural disaster recently or several years ago, the trauma is real and can surface as we engage in our conversation.

¡La traducción del inglés al español ha avanzado mucho en los últimos años! Con el fácil acceso a traducciones sencillas en todos nuestros bolsillos, podríamos pensar que crear materiales multilingües para HFA es más fácil que nunca. En esta sesión, el personal de la Oficina Nacional de HFA explorará los detalles importantes de la traducción y cómo llegamos a darnos cuenta, en asociación con voluntarios de la red HFA, de que una traducción significativa y de calidad al español tiene que ser más que buscar en Google Translate. Únase a nosotros mientras compartimos ideas y estrategias que puede adoptar para garantizar que sus traducciones al español vayan más allá de ser “suficientemente buenas” y brinden al personal y las familias hispanohablantes un sentimiento de verdadera pertenencia.

Translation from English to Spanish has come a long way in recent years! With easy access to simple translation in all of our pockets, we might think that creating multilingual materials for HFA is easier than ever. In this session, staff from HFA’s National Office will dig into the important nuances of translation and how we came to realize, in partnership with volunteers from the HFA Network, that quality, meaningful translation into Spanish means doing more than hopping on Google. Join us as we share ideas and strategies you can take to ensure your Spanish translations move beyond “good enough” toward giving Spanish-speaking staff and families a feeling of true belonging.

How are you feeling about your site’s Equity Plan? Are you ready for some inspiration to take it to the next level? In this session, we will look across the HFA Best Practice Standards for opportunities to apply an equity lens and incorporate parent voice in a meaningful way. DEI is not just in Standard 5! Whether you are a parent, a home visitor or a site or state leader, bring your voice and your curiosity as we move the needle on equity planning. We will think together about strategies for site leaders to allow space for everyone involved with your site, including parents, to apply what they are already doing and make the connections to an inspired and meaningful equity plan that will support your team and your community on the DEI journey.

Home visiting has been able to draw attention to Adverse Childhood Experiences and the connections between ACEs and family outcomes. As a strength-based, parent-centered model, we also know about Positive Childhood Experiences and how that framework can start a new conversation with families and communities about what is possible for parents and their young children. Join this HFA site to learn how HFA aligns with the HOPE framework and how the site implements HOPE in its community.

There is sometimes a cultural mismatch between how native English speakers approach goals and how goal setting is approached in the more collectivist cultures which many immigrant families come from. In some cultures and languages, the word “goal” doesn’t even exist! Further, parents who have experienced high levels of trauma have not had life experiences that framed goal setting as appropriate or possible. This workshop will help English-speaking home visitors serving immigrant families and families who have experienced trauma increase their level of knowledge and skills with regard to Family Goals. Facilitated by a former home visitor, supervisor, and Program Manager with lived expertise as an immigrant to the US, the presentation will include concrete techniques for home visitors to develop meaningful, reachable goals with families.

State leaders and site staff will present their experiences and lessons learned in a CQI process related to the completion of depression screens. Attendees will see the tools and systems used in the process and will hear about how the voices of staff and families were included throughout. Presenters will also invite attendees to share their perspectives and experiences addressing barriers to successful screening and highlight the cultural considerations that were included in the process.

Join members of the HFA National Office’s Parent Advisory Committee as they share their stories of parenting, HFA, and finding their way to parent leadership. Each session will feature different Parent Advisory members and their unique journeys.

HFA sites are tasked in Standard 5 with building respectful team relationships, supporting the development of relational skills in staff, honoring the diverse families they serve, lifting up parent voice, and addressing barriers to service in their community. it is a lot to ask! If you find yourself wondering how you are going to manage all of these things, maybe you should take a look at your SOUP! The Program Manager of an HFA site and an HFA Principal trainer will present together about the experience of Program Managers navigating within their systems to meet and exceed the expectations of Standard 5.

Esta sesión explorará cómo el personal que es bilingüe a menudo se ve obligado a hacer cosas fuera de su alcance de trabajo porque las familias necesitan ayuda adicional con el acceso o simplemente no pueden usar ciertos recursos. Hablaremos juntos sobre los desafíos de apoyar a las familias con muchos factores estresantes y cómo evitar caer en las trampas de la interpretación, asumir demasiado y olvidar cuál es nuestro trabajo y cómo usar la supervisión para mantenernos en el camino correcto.

This session will explore how staff who are bilingual are often pulled to do things outside of their scope of work because families need additional help with access or are just not able to use certain resources. We will talk together about the challenges of supporting families with lots of stressors and how to avoid falling into the traps of interpreting, taking on too much and forgetting what our job is and how to use supervision to keep us on track.