Everyone Experiences Stress

Rain falls on every family, but you can take steps to keep your family strong even when life is challenging.

Whether it’s an online support group, taking a quiet moment to reenergize, or learning about child development, these steps—also known as protective factors—can act as an umbrella to keep away the rain.
 

Audio Description Version

Strong families need support

All families have strengths and challenges. Identifying stressors and building on strengths can help you protect your family’s well-being. Protective factors support strong families, and these resources will help you get started.

What are protective factors?

Protective factors are the strengths and resources families draw on during difficult times to shield them from life's stresses. These activities can help you at home, school, work, or anywhere else. You may already have some of these protective factors within you, or you may need some support from your family or community.
 

Image Title: The 6 Protective Factors - Keep Your Family Strong

Description:
1. Nurturing and Attachment: Infant brains develop best when caregivers work to understand and meet the infant’s
need for love, affection, and stimulation.

2. Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: Parents who understand child development are more likely to
provide their children with respectful communication, developmentally appropriate limits, and opportunities that
promote independence.

3. Parental Resilience: Resilience is the flexibility and inner strength to bounce back when things are tough and knowing how to seek help in challenging times.

4. Social Connections: Parents often find it is easier to care for their children and themselves when they have a network
of emotionally supportive friends, family, and neighbors.

5. Concrete Support for Families: When your family’s basic needs for food, clothing, housing, and transportation are
met, you have more time and energy to devote to your children’s safety and well-being.

6. Social and Emotional Competence of Children: Children’s ability to self-regulate their emotions and behavior, communicate feelings, and solve problems effectively positively impacts their relationships with adults and peers—including their family.

Download (1224 x 792px)

Where do I start?

Learning more about protective factors is the first step. Find out how to build protective factors in your family by exploring these resources.

Access tips for real-life situations
Download a packet of 23 tip sheets (available in both English and Spanish) that cover a wide range of challenges parents face, including temper tantrums, handling finances, and preparing for emergencies. Each tip sheet gives you concrete steps you can take to strengthen yourself and your family.

Discover parenting tools and family activities
Learn more about child development and find supportive parenting strategies.

Find help in your community
Access resources and information available in your community that can help you with the stresses in your life. 

I'm a professional. What can I do?

Strong families depend on strong communities. Learn how to put protective factors into practice and strengthen the available services where you live to help families build upon their strengths.

Prevention Resource Guide
Supports service providers in their work with parents, caregivers, and their children to prevent child abuse and neglect and promote child and family well-being.

Protective Factors Approaches in Child Welfare
Provides an overview of protective factors approaches. This issue brief describes protective and risk factors in families and communities and ways protective factors can help lower the risk of child abuse and neglect now and in the future.

Protective Factors to Promote Well-being
Provides information about protective factors frameworks, including resources about particular protective factors, such as social connections and parental resilience.

Protective Factors in Practice Vignettes
Provides scenarios to test your knowledge on the protective factors. These vignettes may be used as a training tool for new family support workers, as a learning tool for working one on one with parents, or to stimulate discussion at a parent or community café.

Assessing Parent Strengths and Family Connections
Lists resources that can assist child welfare professionals in conducting family assessments in order to connect families with services and supports that build on their strengths.