Community Self Help for Families

Able-differently promotes a self-help model that serves school and younger age children and their families with special health care needs, who have not had success with typical forms of intervention. We support parents solving problems themselves with participation in family centered community partnerships such as with schools, medical homes and mental health systems. Families can then focus on building positive child-family, and cultural-community exchanges in responsive and contingent ways that fosters new opportunities and achievements.

A team encourages multiple views of the problem drawing on existing strengths and resources. We believe this community self-help model will assist families accessing services earlier and finding proactive solutions.

Your Taking Steps to Satisfy Your Child’s Special Needs

We are convinced that parents can gather a few people together to problem solve, to improve adaptive functioning and enhanced quality of life for their child and family. You may already have concerns with one or more of these conditions and now wonder what you should do.

• Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorders

• Autism Spectrum

• Chronic medical and physical challenges

• Emotional and behavioral conditions

• Learning and developmental disabilities

• Complex stress effecting attachment behaviors

Sometimes a serious chronic condition will require a team to process problem solving together, promote clear purposes and goals while keeping what’s important to you in your hopes and dreams. We are excited that you may be interested in perusing some of these ideas. We value your expert knowledge of your child and opinions regarding what’s best for your child.

1.Guide your journey with family centered principles: Some of these may voice your intentions with what’s important to you.

• Value for your family and culture

• Utilize your family and community supports

• Form collaborative teams or partnerships between your family, school and cultural community

• Your family can build resilience through strengths and natural resources

• Improve goodness of fit or the relational match between the learning environment and your child’s learning style and needs.

• Recognize multi-dimensional nature of problems and their solutions

• Make the environment work better for your child, making it more inclusive and less restrictive

• More opportunities to prevent secondary problems and manage stress

 

2.Expand the child-family team members one at a time for optimal collaboration:

• Extended family and friends

• Medical Home or health care person

• Child’s teacher

• School Psychologist

• Social Worker

• Registered Nurse

• Spiritual support

• Counselor / therapist

• Other local providers as needed

3.Expect your team to join together, support your decisions and build new ideas by these steps:

• Concisely share your family stories

• Acknowledge your family’s efforts

• Raise hope

• Develop a stronger voice

• Explore and expand choices

4.Anticipate family outcomes to celebrate:

• Enhanced motivation and satisfaction from achieving what you want

• Defined purposes and goals

• Improved coping skills

• Improved functional-adaptive behaviors and quality of life

• Knowledge and utilization of community resources

5. Initiate community-family service options:

How We Can Help You, Help Your Child

The ABLE-differently Program is available for family community consultation, clinical advice and selective health care coordination when required and when the family has unresolved problems and other additional resources (school, health provider. etc) need to be found. The problem may also be just too big and require more collective ideas and approaches. We ask the parents what concerns they have and what they now want to do, and provide suggestions, support, reconnection and coordination of services with the family.

These phone consultation services are offered by the program as an investment supporting healthy Utah families without costs to parents.

Contact

Parents or referring sources can call 801-520-7376 to discuss their needs and make a phone appointment. A decision will be made together as to what service fits your family and child’s needs. Some families may benefit by an immediate direct referral. Other service options may better meet the increasing needs and complexity through the following:

• Use of the Website Handout to explore many Other Resources and information on forming Core Teams, the Health Care Plan, or the Community Self Help Teaching Model.

• Consultation by phone about resources found on this website and how to build community and social supports.

• A phone conference with parents, a teacher and/or a primary care physician using guiding principles to model skills of:

Talking in respectful conversation

Developing ideas for positive change

Designing solution-focused outcomes

Deciding who will follow up on progress

• Parent may receive a “school-age consult packet” to host and structure the meeting

• Networking and care coordination.

• Community education for the family,medical-home and transition support for youth.

• We would hope to expand telecommunication, use of electronic information systems including other companion websites such as the medical home portal at www.medicalhomeportal.org as well as other means for reaching the community.

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