Intensive Family Intervention (IFI)
Intensive Family Intervention services are short-term, family-focused, and community-based services designed to help families cope with significant stressors or problems that interfere with their ability to nurture their children. The goal of the Intensive Family Intervention Program is to maintain children with their families, or to reunify them, whenever it can be done safely.
Intensive Family Intervention services may be provided to different types of families – birth or biological families, foster families, adoptive families – to help them address major challenges, stabilize the family and enhance family functioning. These services build upon the conviction that children can be safely protected and treated within the home when parents are provided with support and service and empowered to change the family’s life toward healthy functioning.
Team Approach
IFI services are delivered utilizing a team approach and are provided primarily to youth in their current residence and within the family system. The IFI team consists of:
• Licensed therapist – to provide counseling and therapy.
• Family Advocate – to help the family learn critical skills to improve family functioning and connect to community resources.
Team members maintain contact with youth, their families, and community resources on a weekly basis. At the onset of services, the team may spend 3 or more days a week with the youth and family or guardians. As the risk of out-of home placement decreases or the reunification process is less stressful to the family, the IFI team begins decreasing the number and length of visits.
IFI services are generally offered for 90 days and IFI team members are available 24 hours a day in the event of an emergency. Many of the services provided through IFI are within the youth’s home or in another environment familiar to the family.
SERVICES
Our IFI program offers the following services:
* Individual and Family Counseling
* Individual and Family Training
* Diagnostic Evaluation and Assessment
* Treatment Planning
* Case Management
* Crisis Intervention