Family Engagement

Agencies participating in the Performance-based Standards (PbS) standards and continuous improvement program survey their families and use the responses to adapt their practices to improve relationships and outcomes for young people and their families. In this PbS Data Snapshot, we share recent Family Survey responses from the field.

This brief looks at family visitation, staff safety, and behavioral incidents before (April 2019) and after (April 2021) the start of the pandemic. There are two aims: 1) to assess if facility-level family visits, staff perceptions of safety, and behavioral incidents post-pandemic significantly differ from pre-pandemic expected levels, and 2) to assess the relationship between family visits and behavioral incidents as well as the relationship between behavioral incidents and staff safety.

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus and its variants continues to dominate public discussions and exacerbate already difficult situations in neighborhoods, schools, places of work and of worship and in homes and institutions. Because of the nature of the virus and the reality of asymptomatic infections, it is impossible to know the exact number of positive cases that occur within these various contexts. Widespread testing, however, has proven to be the most useful tool for shedding light on the prevalence of the virus and the effectiveness of interventions.

This snapshot of Performance-based Standards (PbS) data from October 2019 reflects some of the benefits of improving the relationships between facility staff and family members and increasing the connection of families to their children.

Research by Alyssa Mikytuck, MPP and Jennifer Woolard, PhD of Georgetown University's Department of Psychology.

Research by Caitlin Cavanagh on the impact of family on youths' educational success and reentry preparedness.