Transforming Risks into Opportunities in Child Protection Cases: A Case Study with a Multisystemic, In-Home, Strength-Based Model

Abstract

Multisystemic, strength-based, in-home, collaborative family-centered programs have been advocated as an efficacious means to help multichallenged families living in poverty. The Integrated Family Assessment and Intervention Model (IFAIM) was developed in Portugal to assist the child protection system in conducting child protection assessments and in supporting multichallenged families with at-risk children and youth to overcome the risks and guarantee the child's safety. This article describes a single case study evaluating the process and outcome of the implementation of IFAIM with a multichallenged family referred by a child protection agency. The results support IFAIM's efficacy in promoting clinical significant changes in family and parental functioning through supporting the family with a focus on its strengths and key family resilience processes.

Keywords:

• child protection
• collaborative therapy
• family assessment
• in-home therapy
• strength-based

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Supported by a doctoral scholarship (SFRH/BD/39912/2007) attributed to the first author by the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal. The first author thanks the ASAS organization in Santo Tirso, Portugal, for making available the team of the Center for Family Support and Parental Counseling and providing the logistics to implement IFAIM for this case study.