Family Mentoring Services

The Family Mentor is responsible for providing enhanced services to support youth and families to mitigate the challenges that arise as youth in our care transition back to their home and community after placement. These services include:

1. Additional or more intensive services for families to ensure access to material support for the increased stability of post-reunification, such as housing, jobs, child care, transportation, new clothing, household items and homemaking services.
2. Additional or more intensive support to assist families in more effectively engaging and navigation of public services and resources, such as education, housing, health/behavioral healthcare and public assistance.
3. Focused support to strengthen self-determination and skill-building to successfully access material supports and engage community systems during times of need post-reunification.
4. Enhanced services to further increase and strengthen social support networks in communities through the reunification process and post-reunification.
5. An effective process or assessment to determine family readiness for reunification.
6. Additional services to support family resilience, healthy family routines, positive parent-child interactions and strong family bonds.

The Family Mentor works very closely with the youth and family during the trial discharge period, including at a minimum, weekly visits to the family, the school the youth is attending, the job site if the youth is employed and following up on community-based preventive services for which the family and youth are engaged. The family mentor continuously assesses the family needs during the trial discharge period to ensure that the youth’s transition back into the home has the greatest chance for success. As with all our programs, our care model, the “trauma informed” Lasallian Culture of Care® is the driving force behind how we provide services, it emphasizes the building of healthy supportive relationships as a key ingredient in helping youth and families obtain self-sustainability. We believe that when given supportive positive relationships and sensitive understanding of the impact of traumatic events and life experience, young people and their families have the resilience and potential to achieve wellbeing and fullness of life.