Community-based service providers are dedicated to helping children and families thrive within their context. This work therefore includes identifying family strengths that can be further developed, including the protective factors of nurturing and attachment, knowledge of parenting and child development, parental resilience, social connections, and concrete supports for parents. Effective casework practice involves leveraging these protective factors, which begins by engaging families in conversation.
The protective factors have always been central to the Resource Guide. A protective factors approach focuses on positive ways to engage families by emphasizing their strengths, in addition to identifying areas where they have room to grow with support. Focusing on protective factors helps children, youth, and families build resilience and contributes to positive outcomes.
The following links directly to the Protective factors vignettes which were designed to support service providers and others in identifying key protective factors, tip sheets to assist with facilitating conversations about essential topics around accessing services and understanding child development and activity calendars that provide examples of ways to plan and engage families in events related to the protective factors.
Prevention Resource Guides
The 2019/2020 Prevention Resource Guide provides the foundational concepts and approaches to the Protective Factors Framework. The 2021/2022 Prevention Resource Guide takes the Protective Factors approach one step further by highlighting the innovative ways that communities around the country are purposefully doing prevention work to help children and families thrive.