Advances: Essential Allies (1994)
Table of Contents:
- Essential Allies: Families & professionals working together (see article below)
- Involving Families in Advisory Roles: Eight steps to success
- Rhode Island Parents Help Shape New Hospital Design: New hospital reflects collaborative design process
- Texas Hospital Embarks on Family-Centered Journey: Seminar participant puts plans to work
- Women Shaping HIV Policies: Responding to ACTG 076 study
- Innovations in Medical Education: Integrating family-centered concepts
Essential Allies:
Families & professionals working together
Throughout the country, families and professionals are working together in new ways. They are collaborating to develop care and services for individual children and their families, and increasingly, they are forming collegial partnerships at the program and policy level. A consensus is growing that these collaborative approaches humanize the service delivery system, improve outcomes for children, and result in greater satisfaction both for providers and families. Families are realizing that they can impact and influence policies and programs. Providers are recognizing that consumer involvement is integral to designing a service system that is both responsive and cost effective.
This issue of Advances focuses on collaboration between families and professionals in program and policy development and evaluation. It includes guidelines for involving families in advisory roles and examples of ways that families are influencing policy, program, and practice in a variety of settings and situations. Several checklists for increasing family participation in advisory roles are included.
Experts in the field of family-centered care have observed that "[t]he presence of parents' or consumers' voices in policy-making conference rooms is not a natural phenomenon. When it does exist, it reflects a deliberate attempt to expand the set of traditional decision-makers to include users of services" (Epstein, Taylor, & Wells, 1990, New England SERVE). We hope that the information presented in Advances will contribute to the "deliberate" and essential effort to ensure that families are part of all policy and program discussions. Their voices and expertise are essential to the creation of a more responsive, effective system of services for children and families.
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