Rachel (not her real name), a 23-year-old South Hayward woman, was first contacted by Child Protective Services (CPS) after her toddler son reported seeing Rachel’s boyfriend beat and rape her. After the boyfriend punched her in the stomach, Rachel went into premature labor with twins. One twin survived, but died a year later of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS, or “crib death”).

At that point, CPS contacted Alameda County’s Another Road to Safety (ARS), a unique program developed by Alameda County’s First 5 agency, based on creating relationships to strengthen families. An ARS family advocate began to visit Rachel weekly, trying to help her cope with her abusive boyfriend, the death of her baby, and an increasingly aggressive three-year-old.

Services and support

The family advocate connected Rachel to counseling and other community services. When Rachel confided that she was using methamphetamine and was scared she might lose her son, the advocate enrolled her in a residential drug treatment program where she could bring her son.

Then the advocate continued to meet with Rachel weekly, offering support and finding community resources for her son. Soon after her release from the program, Rachel and her son moved to Los Angeles to be closer to family and away from her boyfriend. She still stays in touch with her advocate and sends photos of her son.

“What made the difference for her is that when she realized she really was in a crisis, she already had someone in place, someone she trusted,” says Greta Fillingim, clinical supervisor for Another Road to Safety’s program in Hayward.

Another road to safety

When CPS receives a report of possible child neglect or abuse, they rate the family’s level of risk: very high, high, moderate, or low. In many cases, if the problems aren’t rated “very high risk,” nothing more is done.

But in Alameda County, families not rated “very high risk” are invited to enroll in ARS, if they have a child under five and live in one of two target neighborhoods ( East Oakland and South Hayward). “We wanted to provide services to families that were not in severe crisis,” says ARS former clinical supervisor Margie Burton. “Our services would prevent them from being turned over to CPS again—which would require more funds and eventually could lead to having the child removed from the family.”

The ARS strategy includes several key elements:

Home visiting

Participants get up to nine months of weekly home visits by a family advocate, who helps the family find services they need—parenting classes, child care, respite care, mental health or domestic violence counseling, nutrition advice, depression and substance-abuse screenings and treatment, developmental screenings for all the children, and even money for food and diapers.

“Our job is not just to work with them for nine months and then leave,” explains Fillingim. “We want to get them engaged in the community and connect them to resources so they can lower their stress levels and risk factors for future abuse.”

Relationship building

“In ARS,” says Burton, “the services are provided by advocates who are from the community in which they’re working and, as much as possible, they’re matched with the families in language, ethnicity, and background. The idea is to be relationship-based, so there can be a deeper level of understanding between the family and the advocate.”

Family Advocate Ruth Gallo says, “It’s almost like we become part of the family. We visit with them once a week, we become very familiar with the family, all the relatives, the neighbors. Anything they might need, I’ll help them find, so I get asked questions about legal assistance, finding housing—once I was asked to help baptize a baby.”

Reflective supervision

Family advocates build those relationships with the support of “reflective supervision.” Gallo explains: “We spend time talking about how we’re feeling and approaching different situations. In the beginning I wasn’t very comfortable with it because I felt like I was talking about myself and not the client. But now I see the value in it, because how I feel impacts the work I do with my clients...with reflective supervision you focus on your feelings and how that affects your work with the families.”

Family activities

The ARS program also includes parenting classes on topics like parent-infant bonding, creating family rituals, and school readiness. They involve families in fun and creative ways, such as the four-week hands-on program ARS provides in partnership with U.C. Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.

“This is a program that’s really math- and science-based for preschoolers,” says Fillingim. “But it turned out to be such a mental health program! The families would come, eat pizza together, have circle time, and do art projects with their kids. Then they’d have a meeting to talk about their kids and their concerns. It was so transformative for the parents and the children to have a fun time bonding together.”

“Too often we’re so focused on the crisis that we don’t get to the core issues,” she adds. “Unless we slow down and get to the family, build their strengths, we continue to react to the crises instead of being proactive.”

“This program is really a philosophical change in how we think about protecting children,” says Hector Mendez, executive director of La Familia Counseling Services in Hayward, one of the two pilot sites for Another Road to Safety. When there are problems, “the ARS team moves in like a new member of the family, someone who is calm and can see the problems and gradually strengthen and preserve the family. It’s the way things should have been done all along.”

Another Road to Safety

• Founded: August 2002

• Funding: From Every Child Counts, Alameda County’s First 5 program, and the Alameda County Social Services Agency. Additional funds from Administration for Children, Youth and Families, a federal child welfare program.

• Pilot sites: La Familia Counseling Services in Hayward and Family Support Services of the Bay Area in Oakland

• Families served live in one of the two target neighborhoods and have a child under five or pregnant woman and are referred from CPS

• Contact: Deborrah Bremond or Carla Keener, Every Child Counts, 510-875-2400 or Sally Lee, Alameda County Social Services Agency, 510-780-8604