WESTCHESTER COUNTY – TRAINING MANUAL

Westchester County had the distinct privilege of creating the first Coordinated Children's Services Initiative (CCSI) training manual on Child and Family Teams.  Westchester successfully responded to a request for applicants from CCSI and Families Together, to write a training manual. The target audience was staff from multiple child serving systems (education, juvenile justice, child-welfare, mental health) and parent advocates who would learn to develop needed skills in facilitating Tier I Child and Family Team meetings.

Westchester County's efforts to reform its children's service delivery system began in 1989 and was enhanced by CCSI in 1993.  Westchester based the design of its system on the federal CASSP program that provided guiding principles for a family-focused system of care.  For the past seven years, Westchester has embarked on an ambitious training regimen to infuse these key principles in the entire child serving systems/agencies.  Since that time, Westchester CCSI has facilitated over 100 local, state and national training programs, impacting more than 4,500 service providers and parents. 

Developing the CCSI training manual provided Westchester County Dept. of Community Mental Health and Family Ties the opportunity to compile all of their training materials and experiences.  The 65-page manual, co-authored by Michael Orth (DCMH) and Karen Fredricks (Director, Family Ties) includes chapters on Training Tips, Paradigm Shift, Family Support/Empowerment, Child and Family Teams, Skills in Facilitating Child and Family Teams and Developing Support Circles.  Each chapter includes a description on the topic and related exercises.  The training team is grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from the pioneers in the wraparound field.  Of particular not are John VanDenBerg, John Franz, Naomi Tanned, and "Just Therapy" staff from New Zealand and Karl Dennis who have influenced the teams thoughts and practice over the years.   Westchester appreciates the leadership of CCSI Tier III and Families Together in supporting a training manual available for all CCSI sites. 

To download the manual in Adobe Acrobat format, click on the link above.  If you don't have Acrobat, you can download it from the Acrobat link below