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Who We Are

About Us

Established in 1993, Franklin County Family and Children First Council (FCFCFC) has long-served as the hub for all child and family serving systems in the county. The Council is made up of a diverse group of partner agencies who inform, lead, and continually adapt the organization based on the needs of families within the county. Family and Children First Councils perform four core functions: engaging and empowering families, building community capacity, shared accountability, and coordinating systems and services.

 

The FCFCFC’s team of staff is one of passionate, multi-disciplined professionals dedicated to serving families through voice and choice and strength-based values. Through a commitment to developing trauma competent, relationship-based services, FCFCFC aims to equip children, youth, families and community partners with new skills and foster a sense of hope and resiliency.

Image by Clay Banks

Our Culture and Values

We offer a framework where equity is braided into the core fabric of all of this agency’s work. At Franklin County Family and Children First Council (FCFCFC) this commitment manifests through intentional recruitment, staff development, and advocacy for the systems we collaborate with as well as the families and children we serve. Essential components of equity include diversity and inclusion which serve as tools aimed toward the ultimate goal of an authentically just society.

Mission, Vision & Guiding Values

The mission of Franklin County Family and Children First Council is to increase the access, capacity and effectiveness of services for the most vulnerable Franklin County youth and their families.

Franklin County will be a thriving community of hopeful, healthy children and strong families. 

Our guiding values, as expressed within our four core pillars, explain how we work with children and families to fulfill this mission.

The National Wraparound Initiative has identified 10 Principles that guide Wraparound Services. Franklin County Family and Children First Council believes the 10 Principles are important and should be one of the four foundational pillars guiding the work of FCFC. It should be noted that the principles of wraparound are just one of the components of Wraparound Services. 

1. Voice and Choice:

  • Those receiving services, as experts of their own situations, should be integral to and have influence over services and supports they receive. The opportunity for success increases substantially when people feel ownership over a plan that addresses their priorities and gives them choice about strategies to meet needs that are most closely aligned with their unique culture and build on their strengths.

  • Voice and Choice are concepts that apply to all areas of FCFC: parent voice on council, parent/caregivers with their Multi-system or HMG family teams, service provider’s voice on coaching plans, and staff’s voice on committees.

2. Team Based:

  • Teams are integral to the work we do at FCFC. In Wraparound, the team consists of individuals agreed upon by the family and who are committed to them through informal, formal, and community support and service relationships.

  • The Multi-system and Help Me Grow programs develop family teams that support the outcomes families have said are important to them. These teams assist in accessing the resources, services and supports needed to reach the family outcomes.

  • The BBL program convenes teams of professionals in multiple layers from administrative teams to teams of direct service providers that assist the organization in defining and achieving the outcomes that improve data for youth and families.

  • FCFCC convenes teams or committees to bring child serving systems together to address community wide issues that, ultimately, improve services and supports for families such as improving access to services or creating programs to fill gaps in services and supports.

3. Natural Supports:

  • People who represent sources of natural support often have a high degree of importance and influence in the lives of others. Such supports may also be able to provide types of support that professional services find difficult to provide. This principle emphasizes the need for the team and organization to intentionally encourage the full participation of natural supports.

  • Natural supports are those that a person regularly interacts with whether it is a relative, co-worker, neighbor, friend, a faith community, or a book club or other social group. If someone lacks natural supports, the team should work with them to actively find ways to increase connections natural supports.

4. Collaboration:

  • FCFC was built on collaboration. Collaboration means team members work cooperatively and share responsibility for developing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating a single plan. The plan reflects a blending of team member’s perspectives, mandates, and resources. The plan guides and coordinates each team members’ work towards meeting the team’s goals.

  • All of the FCFC programs depend on collaboration with community partners and the FCFC Council is a collaborative group of child and family serving organizations that are working in partnership to improve community wide outcomes.

5. Community Based:

  • Those we serve should have access to services and supports that take place in the most inclusive, most responsive, most accessible, and least restrictive settings possible.

  • In Multi-system and HMG, the services need to safely promote child and family integration into home and community life. It should include places where other similar aged children and youth go and should support community connection for both youth and family.

  • Building Better Lives serves providers within the community in which they work and supports them in building relationship with their peers.

  • FCFC ensures services and meetings are held in the community and strives to support and partner with community-based organizations to provide contracted services.

6. Culturally Responsive:

  • FCFC demonstrates respect for the values, preferences, beliefs, culture, and identity of all those we serve. FCFC has a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and strives to provide continuous, ongoing learning opportunities for staff to learn and integrate DEI within their interactions with both those they serve and other staff

7. Individualized:

  • Individualized planning is unique to each person. Plans are not “one size fits all” but are developed based on the strengths, needs, resources and circumstances of the person. Several other principles support the individualized planning, including but not limited to voice and choice, natural supports, strengths and culture. Individualized planning can pertain to those we serve (Individualized Family Service Plans, Family Plans, Coaching Plans) as well as FCFC staff (professional development plans).

8. Strengths Based:

  • ​FCFC works to identify, build on, and enhance capabilities, knowledge, skills, and assets of the youth, families, service providers, staff, team members of those we serve and the community.

9. Unconditional:

  • Despite challenges, FCFC continues to work toward the outcomes, being persistent in providing interventions and revising plans if they are not helping the youth, family, service provider or others to successfully reach their outcome. Adversity is not viewed as a failure but an opportunity to try again with an updated or different plan and a commitment to continue working together until the team agrees there is not longer a need for the services or supports.

10. Outcome Based:

  • Our work contains observable or measurable indicators of success and the ability to monitor progress in terms of these indicators. Monitoring outcomes allows teams to regularly assess the effectiveness of the plan as a whole and to determine when the plan needs to be revised.

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