Service Coordination: A Guide for Families
Part 5 - The Important Role of Families

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Service Coordination: A Guide for Families
Part 5 - The Important Role of Families

The reason for service coordination is to bring children and families and the services they need together. Important! The FCFC needs to hear families' ideas about how to do this. Your family's thoughts and ideas can help your county make service coordination better for children and families.

How can my family participate in service coordination?

Your family can be a part of service coordination in many ways. Remember that there are two kinds of service coordination:

• Individual Family Service Coordination Plan
• County Service Coordination Mechanism

The county service coordination mechanism helps all children because it gets county agencies to work as a team. The individual family service coordination plan helps your child and family because it organizes services just for your child and family. Your family can participate and have a say in both of these kinds of service coordination.

How can I help my child and family?

• Tell the FCFC about your child and family. Once the FCFC knows about your child, the FCFC might make it easier for your child and family to get services you need. When you tell the FCFC about your child, you are doing something called "self-referral."
• Go to meetings about your individual family service coordination plan. You can tell the team your ideas about what should be part of your plan. Tell your service coordination planning team important things about your family's culture so together, you can plan services that respect your family's culture, race and ethnic group.
• Tell the FCFC if you approve of the person they choose to coordinate the services in your individual family service coordination plan.
• Ask for meetings to talk about your individual family service coordination plan. You can ask for a meeting to talk about how the plan is working, and if it needs to be changed.
• Bring an advocate to your individual family service coordination plan meeting if you need someone to help you or give you support. Sometimes it is easier to say what you think if another person who is on your side is helping you, or is just there to support you. Meetings can be hard to deal with on your own, and an advocate or support person can help you be a part of the meeting.
• Important! Speak up if you don't agree with your individual family service coordination plan. If you do not agree with what the plan says or how it is working for your child or family, speak up and tell the FCFC, and ask for changes. One way to do this is by using the county's dispute resolution process. This is the county's step-by-step way to work things out when families or agencies do not agree with the FCFC. Each county service coordination mechanism must have a dispute resolution process, and the FCFC must tell families about it. Read more about the dispute resolution process in Part 6 - FCFC Dispute Resolution Process of this booklet.

How can I help other children and families in my county?

• Important! Become a member of your county FCFC. By being a part of the FCFC, you can help decide how to plan the county service coordination mechanism for children in your county. Each county must have at least three family members on the FCFC. In counties where it is possible, family members should make up one-fifth of the number of people on the FCFC. If your FCFC has an executive committee that is set up by your county's Board of County Commissioners, that executive committee must have at least one family member on it.
• Tell the FCFC your ideas about service coordination and what children and families need. You don't have to be a part of the FCFC to do this. Each FCFC must ask people who live in the community for ideas about how the county service coordination mechanism should work.

How FCFCs are helping families to be part of service coordination

These are ways FCFCs are helping families be a part of service coordination.

• Making sure that family advocates are at family team meetings;
• Having family team meetings at times and places that are good for families (for example, after the work day in the family's home, in the library, or in a conference room outside of the juvenile court hearing room);
• Linking families to advocacy groups whose members have first-hand experience with the systems that serve families and children, like parent advocacy groups and community advocacy groups.

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