online courses

Family Preservation Team Meetings (FPTM) are a core strategy to engage family and community members in safety and placement-related decision making, a critical aspect of child welfare work. These meetings aim to improve the agency’s decision-making process; to encourage the support and “buy-in” of the family, extended family and community; and to develop specific, individualized interventions to meet the unique needs of older youth.

Family Preservation Team Meetings bring youth, family and community members to the table together with the professionals when the agency is considering removal of a youth from the home. The meetings focus on whether removal is warranted and, if so, where the youth would go. Facilitated by non-case carrying, experienced child welfare staff, the goal is to seek consensus on a plan that protects the youth and preserves family relationships. Today, more teens are coming into care for reasons not directly related to abuse and neglect. They are landing in child welfare placements because of parent-child conflict that threatens the youth’s safety and well-being. Because the family dynamics are not necessarily directly related to maltreatment, it suggests that an in-home or community-based response may be more appropriate in such cases.