Child Welfare Services: Family Visit Coaching

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

Family Visit Coaching (FVC) is an innovative program developed from the Visit Coaching Model that was created by Marty Beyer, Ph.D. The County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency, Child Welfare Services (CWS) implemented FVC to accelerate the permanency process for families and children in foster care. Visit coaching helps parents meet the unique needs of their children during their family visitation time in the community, homes, visit centers or offices. FVC is fundamentally different from other supervised visitation models because the focus is on family strengths and their ability to meet the needs of the children. FVC is a service designed to help parents understand the unmet safety needs that brought their children to the attention of CWS and resulted in their placement in the foster care system. It supports learning how to address those needs during family visitation so they may reunify with their children as quickly as safely possible. FVC improves parenting by having a coach meet with the parent before the visit, actively coach during the visit and debrief with the parent after the visit. FVC builds on parents’ existing strengths to empower them to take charge of their visits by reinforcing their strengths and supporting their belief that they can meet their child’s needs and keep them safe. The FVC program is community-based and provides enhanced visitation services to children and families involved with CWS. FVC supports timely family reunification and permanency for children in the foster care system.