Families First Toolkit


Data Resources

October 4, 2022

Families First

A toolkit for identifying community assets and needs to strengthen resources supporting child and family well-being

Welcome to Families First Toolkit, a collection of resources from Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York for identifying community assets and needs to strengthen resources supporting child and family well-being.

This toolkit provides a framework and practical strategies to conduct regular assessments of community needs and resources using an approach that is strengths-based, participatory, family-centered, and committed to racial justice. This approach is adaptable to any group developing community-level systems change projects that improve child and family well-being. The assessment process uses a variety of data collection methods leveraging publicly available data, as well as collecting new quantitative and qualitative data through interactive, family-centered activities. The toolkit also includes strategies for sharing findings with communities and developing action plans to address the opportunities and challenges elevated during the community-based assessment process.

Clicking on the button Download the Publication will open a new tab/window to view the entire toolkit as a PDF; Download the Module will open a specific module as a PDF. To start viewing these components of the toolkit, scroll down and use the right panel to navigate.

Introduction Copied Link!

Assessing child and family well-being needs and assets at the community level demands a multi-pronged approach leveraging both quantitative and qualitative methods and multiple modalities of speaking with families, service providers, and other community members. Public data offer a wealth of information, yet they are at times limited in their granularity, recency, and relevance as answers to the core questions a group might want to ask.

The family-centered methods in this toolkit are designed to meet families where they are and with the intention to include people who are least likely to be heard in matters that affect them. Too often the lived experiences of families are not just unheard but disregarded as anecdotal. However, by systematically documenting the experiences of young people and their caregivers, we can transform anecdotes into evidence. This toolkit offers a structure for collecting and analyzing the views of community members and creates a record that can be referenced not just for developing local service arrays that are responsive to communities’ strengths and needs, but also as a record for future efforts to leverage and monitor progress over years.

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