SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

Our vision: Support for Families strives to create a world in which:
• Every family has an inspired vision of their child's future
• Families have opportunities to network with each other
• Families, professionals and the community at large value and celebrate diversity
• Families, professionals and the community at large are knowledgeable about the resources that exist
• The community at large values inclusion of all children, youth and their families
• Institutional systems will ensure family centered care in which services are coordinated, community based and families' partner in decision making at all levels
• Providers will practice family centered care and partner with families at all levels of decision making
Our mission: The purpose of Support for Families is to ensure that families of children with any kind of disability or special health care need have the knowledge and support to make informed choices that enhance their children's development and well being. Through fostering partnership among families, professionals and the community our children can flourish.

Our Program goals:
• Ensure that families have a safe place to express their feelings, lessen their sense of isolation, share strategies and learn about services/resources
• Ensure that families, professionals and the community have knowledge they need about specific disabilities, navigating systems, current research, best practices for care, laws and regulations for family centered care and inclusion.
• Ensure that families, professionals and the community have access to that same up to date information, resources, and referrals
• Encourage and support convening and collaboration groups for streamlining services (a seamless system of services), engaging the community, and addressing systems change
• Encourage and support families and youth to take on greater leadership roles in the community (local and state level)

1) Continue to enhance our capacity to provide both high touch and high tech information, education and support to meet families where they are at and create a network of support to meet their individual and urgent needs.
As a way of serving families who are hard to reach, we want to provide the face to face, peer to peer, and ongoing support needed to build relationships and a network of support. In addition we want to better use the technologies available for dissemination of information and education.
2) Build our capacity to support families and youth to take on a greater leadership role and ensure that families' partner at all levels and their voices are being heard.
We firmly believe that children benefit when their families are informed, educated and partner at all levels of their child's care. We believe that youth are better able to care for themselves when they are able to partner with the professionals who serve them. We know systems benefit when family and youth participate and partner at all levels and the systems are responsive to their voices.
3) Maintain our commitment to collaboration and systems change by bringing differing perspectives together to agree on a goal and work towards it. This includes bringing together parents and professionals, working with different specific disability groups, ethnic groups, neighborhood groups, as well as other nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies. We believe that “the whole is more powerful and influential than the sum of its parts."
Families are often connected to many different services and agencies that don't communicate and work together. This leads to confusion for families and professionals. In addition, families are often caught between gaps in services and therefore their children's needs do not get met. In addition, there is sometimes duplication, which it is a waste of precious resources. Families' benefit and resources are maximized when families, providers, agencies and systems work together.
4) Continue to build our capacity to provide quality services, to stay in the forefront, address sustainability and risk management and continue to be innovative by using the "Circle": plan using our vision, strategic plan and setting annual objectives; implement our programs using agreed upon procedures; evaluate data both qualitative and quantitative to measure our impact; report back and assess taking time to reflect – what can we do different, how can we improve before we begin the circle again.
We place high value in providing quality services, we are proud of the work we are doing and recognize that we can always do better.
5) Continue to build a diverse resource base, including diverse funding and the use of volunteers increasing our community based resource support.
We need to ensure that we are using volunteers to the best of our ability, and that we have multiple funding streams to sustain our programs and services.

Support for Families has more than 30 years of experience providing information, education and support to families of children with any kind of special need. As SFCD has grown over the years, we have kept our emphasis on family-to-family support. Most of our agency leadership, staff, and volunteers are, themselves, family members of children with special needs. Our Executive Director, for example, began her involvement with Support for Families as a client when her daughter was born with significant disabilities; she became Executive Director in 1991. Our Family Resource Specialist staff members, our volunteer Parent Mentors, and more than half of our Board of Directors are also parents or family members of children with special needs.

Support for Families reviews its Strategic Plan annually to monitor progress towards goals and refine annual objectives. Examples of progress on our current goals and objectives include:
- Increased numbers of families and professionals accessing services. For example, over the last 5 years, the number of families receiving services from our Phone Line has increased approximately 44%; Attendance at workshops and trainings increased 42%. Evaluations of the quality and Impact of services from families and professionals consistently ranges from 85% - 95%.
-Increased involvement of youth and families in leadership positions. For example, the number of family members completing training as Parent Mentors now reaches more than 100.
-New collaboration and system change activities. Two examples: the SF Inclusion Networks, which is working to prepare more early childhood professionals to work with children who have special needs; and our new access and inclusion partnerships with museums, arts, and cultural institutions around the city.
-Data measurement: We have developed a new Salesforce data management platform that will provide more accurate ways to track and monitor client outcomes.
-Agency Resources: We now have a dedicated Volunteer Manager, and work with an average of nearly 300 volunteers annually. Our revenues from individual and corporate donors continued to increase.