Family Paths, Inc.

Family Paths is committed to honoring our Mission, Vision and Values while meeting and exceeding goals outlined in the following areas of our current 2017-2020 Strategic Plan: Agency Culture and Morale; Client Services; Community Visibility and Collaboration (previously named “Marketing”); Technology and Infrastructure; Fundraising

Mission: Family Paths strengthens family relationships by providing mental health treatment and supportive services with respect, integrity, compassion, and hope. Vision: A safe home for every child. Values: Respect in our communications. Integrity in our actions. Compassion for our struggles. Hope for the future.

Family Paths is strongly positioned in the evidence-based Strengthening Families Framework with an emphasis on trauma-informed and diversity-informed practice, and with an intention to integrate family driven care principles. Research from the Center for the Study of Social Policy shows that when five key protective factors are well established in a family, the likelihood of child abuse and neglect diminishes. These protective factors are: parental resilience, social connections, concrete support in times of need, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children. Family Paths’ services and programs focus on enhancing these protective factors by: 1) providing mental health services to help children learn skills to effectively communicate their feelings and help parents better understand their child’s development; 2) educating parents on positive ways to discipline and communicate with their children while increasing social connections; and 3) assisting parents who are in crisis or need referrals to resources and community services. As leaders at the forefront of child abuse prevention, we know by reaching both parents and kids, there is less likely to be child abuse. The goals and objectives are 1) prevent child abuse by providing parent support counseling to stressed parents and/or referrals to immediate resources and community services via Hotline; 2) educating parents on positive ways to discipline and communicate with their children while increasing social connections; and 3) to provide mental health services to help children learn skills to effectively communicate their feelings, reduce mental health symptoms and help parents better understand their child’s development.

Family Paths' programs use strategies and interventions informed by the Strengthening Families Framework with an emphasis on trauma-informed and diversity-informed practice. We maintain a welcoming and supportive environment for clients and our culturally diverse staff; We support accountability with training, professional development and self-care within the larger frame of our agency culture. Family paths continues to affirm our role as a leader in strengthening families and social justice initiatives. We know that without supporting parents, we cannot appropriately address the needs of children. Our programs are the embodiment of the services we offer to parents, kids and families and each program is strategically designed to meet a specific need or provide a resource of value to our diverse community:

Our free, Parenting Stress Helpline, staffed in English, Spanish and with access to most all languages via the Language Line provides live, voice-to-voice support from 24/7/365, with referrals to our in-house services or more than 900 community resources from our up-to-date custom data base.

Foster Parents Advice Line (FosterPAL) our 24-hour advice line to foster and kinship caregivers.

Positive Parenting Class curriculum is designed for parents of all families, promoting understanding of parenting skills, child development and knowledge for a healthy, safe, and nurturing environment.

Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors is a nationally recognized, comprehensive, evidence based 10-session, specialized parent education program.

Fatherhood & Co-Parenting: Beyond Conflict is a novel parent ed class tailored for dads and male caregivers to build skills and confidence in co-parenting.

Treatment, Intervention & Prevention Services (TIPS) offers sliding-scale, office-based therapy for children, parents, couples and families.

Families in Transition Program (FIT) is a flexible, comprehensive community mental health model supporting children of all ages and their families, with services provided in the environment that best meets the child and family’s needs including schools, homes and community centers.

Early Childhood Mental Health (ECMH) provides relationship-based mental health services to parent-child dyads of toddlers and preschool-aged children experiencing emotional or behavioral difficulties.

CalWORKS Case Management and Therapeutic Services assist parents transitioning from welfare to work by removing barriers to self-sufficiency with support and resources.

Victims of Crime Therapeutic Services provides specialized trauma treatment to qualifying individuals.

Preschool Mental Health Consultation places consultants in the preschool classroom for weekly observations in collaboration with staff and parents.

Finding Peace Within is our award-winning, 11-week skill-based support group for women with past trauma.

The Family Yoga Project offers caregiver and separate, parent/child yoga classes free or by donation.

For over 47 years, our Parenting Stress Helpline has provided parents and caregivers with someone to talk to when they need support. In 1980, Family Paths began providing traditional counseling services to children and their families who have been victims of abuse or who are at risk of child abuse and we added general Parent Education classes soon after, with classes in English and Spanish. More recently, we have continued expanding to include specialized Parent Ed that addresses specific needs of our community, including father-specific services. We became the first agency in the county to be certified providers of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors (AP/OD), an evidence-based 10 session parenting program originally created by and for the Latinx community, and has since proven effective for several other racial/ethnic groups, with children ages 0-5. We have provided the (AP/OD) program in Oakland Head Start (OHS) since 2016 with funding from the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth. We have since trained YMCA-Bay Area staff in the program for their Head Start sites and have taught the program at 4 C’s as part of the Hayward Promise Neighborhood Initiative. We are recognized as the regional experts in this program, awarded a grant from the Packard Foundation to create an AP/OD Professional Learning Community, and in 2019 were chosen by the AP/OD National Institute to become a local Trainer-of-Trainers Institute.

Family Paths regularly enhances and adjusts our Family Support Program services to address current and emerging needs within the communities we serve. For example, over the past several years we have increased our focus on serving fathers and father specific programming, including implementing Father Friendly Principles in collaboration with Alameda County Fathers Corps, with funding from the Greater Good Science Center to create innovative parent education classes and curated resources dedicated to Fatherhood and Co-Parenting.

Family Paths provides prevention services along with child abuse treatment/psychotherapy trauma treatment to Alameda County youth and their families who have been victims of all types of abuse and trauma, including those who have witnessed or suffered from family and community violence. We offer individual, family, and group counseling services tailored to meet clients’ specific needs in order to minimize the long-term effects of abuse or trauma. We primarily serve extremely low-income to low-income families and our services are culturally sensitive and offered in multiple languages, including English and Spanish. Family Paths’ Multicultural Organizational Development group regularly meets to implement and revise strategies to monitor, develop, and support culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
Our stable Board of Directors continues to grow and innovate. Since 2017, we’ve committed to furthering board development with specialized board retreats, training and seminars in Philanthropy.

In FY 2018-19, we exceeded our goal to field more than 6,000 calls on our Helpline; We received the Alameda County Mental Health Association Promising Innovative Program Community Service Award for Finding Peace Within, our 10 week skills building group designed to support women with past trauma by providing simple and practical skills that can be practiced in daily life. The fee is based on a sliding scale and the group is free for low income mothers;

We provided 10 trainings to allied CBO’s as the lead agency for Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors (AP/OD) Professional Learning Community, Parent Ed curriculum, in partnership with the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and funding from their 2-year grant of $20,000 each year, and became an official AP/OD Trainer of Trainers Institute; We began a new contract as lead providers of AP/OD for Hayward Promise in collaboration with 4 C’s of Alameda County. Additionally, we are proud to have provided free, high-quality childcare and healthy snacks for our 96 parent education classes throughout Alameda County.

Family Paths was proud to complete our inaugural Parent Ed Series, Fatherhood and Co-Parenting: Beyond Conflict, for fathers and male-caregivers in collaboration with Alameda Co. Father’s Corps, First Five Alameda and Alameda Co. Dept. of Public Health. We curated and launched a dedicated web page for fathers and male-caregivers which premiered at our Fatherhood Celebration, the culminating event celebrating implementation of our strategic goals including Fatherhood Initiatives with father-specific services informed by Father Friendly Principles and as an official Community Partner with Alameda Co. Father’s Corps. Demand for this new series has increased. We continue serving fathers and male-caregivers while currently running a wait list for the next series. We also have requests for these classes in Spanish and have secured an accomplished male, Spanish-speaking provider to begin classes in Spanish in the coming year.

We were awarded a CalWORKS contract augmentation that significantly expands our services, and were proud recipients of several new grant sources and increased funding from long time supports, including: The Foss Family Foundation, The In-and-Out Burger Foundation, Square Inc, Kaiser, and the Bernard E. and Alba Witkin Charitable Foundation, and awarded an in-kind consulting grant for professional services from Harvard Business School Community Partners for marketing strategy and visibility expertise, valued at $60,000.

Currently, we are aggressively seeking new and sustainable funding sources to enhance and expand our most innovative services to address emerging needs in the community. Later this year we will embark upon the next iteration of our strategic plan, starting with final analysis of the current plan’s initiatives, successes and challenges and culminating in an informed and focused 2020-23 Strategic Plan.