Katie Palmer-House
For the past decade, the Department’s Empowering Families Project has administered the Cornell Family Development Training and Credentialing (FDC) Program, a strengths-based, interagency training program for frontline family workers. With 5,000 FDC-credentialed workers in New York State and estimates of 10,000 workers trained in 16 other states offering FDC programs, recent FDC research findings suggest workers’ knowledge and understanding of empowerment play a key role in helping families set and reach goals of healthy self-reliance.
To better understand the impact of family worker training on empowerment of families, Dr. Katie Palmer-House, Senior Instructor with the Empowering Families Project, interviewed 15 workers and 25 family members in two counties in New York State. Workers in the study included Head Start family advocates with the Child Development Associate (CDA) and community action agency workers who had earned the Family Development Credential (FDC). Both worker training programs are grounded in tenets of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development. Since Head Start Programs often hire past participants and employment qualifications for community-based workers can vary from a high school diploma to an undergraduate degree, the goal of the study was to explore the types of knowledge, skills, and experiences that helped workers meet the evolving demands of practice. Workers completed a Definitions of Empowerment survey along with in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Family members were also interviewed to learn how workers helped them set and reach goals.
The study’s findings uncovered three shifts in workers’ learning about empowerment associated with their lengths of employment. In addition, workers described three major skill sets that helped them empower families: attending, processing, and meaning-making. The findings also suggested that the types and roles of workers’ support networks (e.g. supervisors, co-workers, mentors, and professional groups) varied over the course of their employment. The shifts and patterns in workers’ understanding of empowerment suggested the possibility of three developmental stages in their learning: Socialization (2 to 5 years employment), Internalization (5 to 10 years), and Identification (over 10 years).
Overall, the findings of the study suggested workers learn to help empower families by learning to empower themselves through shifts in learning that enhance their own sense of self-efficacy. Workers’ learning did not involve a simple transfer or application of new knowledge and skills. It appeared to fulfill a worker’s deep-seated desire to make a positive difference in the lives of marginalized and distressed families.
For More Information

Katie Palmer-House, kep26@cornell.edu

The Perceived Impact of Strengths-Based Family Worker Training: Workers' Learning that Helped Empower Families, is a synopsis of an article on Katie’s study that was recently accepted to Families In Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Work.

FDC website: http://www.human.cornell.edu/che/HD/FDC/