Family Engagement Inventory Now Live!

Family engagement is recognized as a foundation for success across the human services and education fields. The recently launched Family Engagement Inventory (FEI), a Child Welfare Information Gateway microsite, is an interactive web-based tool designed to familiarize professionals in child welfare, juvenile justice, behavioral health, education, and early childhood education with family engagement as defined and implemented across these fields of practice.

The purpose of the FEI is to help practitioners, managers and system leaders understand the commonalities and differences in family engagement across the disciplines in order to support cross-system collaboration among multiple systems often working with the same families.

The key goal of the FEI is to aggregate knowledge in a way that assists professionals in engaging in a true multidisciplinary exploration of this important approach to helping families. To achieve this goal, the FEI draws upon two frameworks for the translation of research to practice: the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF) and the Rapid Synthesis Translation Process (RSTP). 

Information Gateway staff developing the FEI conducted an extensive review of various published literature and information about family engagement best practices, consulted with experts from all five disciplines as well as federal partners (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Department of Education, Children’s Bureau, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Early Childhood-Child Welfare workgroup), and incorporated their expert feedback into the inventories for the respective disciplines.

This feedback process ensured a continuous focus on both the utility and the rigor of the review and distilled the information gathered into five aspects (domains) of family engagement: (1) definitions of family engagement, (2) themes underlying family engagement, (3) benefits of family engagement, (4) strategies for enhancing family engagement, and (5) what works. Strategies for enhancing family engagement on three levels are included in the FEI:

• The practice level includes methods, plans of action, processes, and/or policies designed to be used by frontline staff of each discipline in order to enhance or achieve family engagement.
• The program level provides links to various family engagement programs and/or methods of family engagement used by agencies of the different disciplines referenced in the inventory.
• The system level provides links to concepts, methods, plans of action, and processes designed to assist agencies and systems to engage families to improve outcomes for families and children.

The What Works domain includes links to and information on selected practices and programs related to family engagement. These practices and programs have been validated and are supported by a documented, evaluative process. Lastly, the FEI includes a resources section that offers links to useful or valuable information and websites that provide additional literature about family engagement processes, methods, and programs.

Whereas most evidence reviews focus on the effectiveness of a program within a given discipline, the FEI focuses on a strategy across disciplines and puts the latest and most reliable, practical information about engaging families into the hands of those who work directly with families, manage programs, and lead systems.

The Family Engagement Inventory is a microsite of Child Welfare Information Gateway .