Youth Thrive’s five Protective and Promotive factors are five essential elements that research tells us help young people thrive, even in the face of adversity. The Five Factors are: Youth Resilience. Social Connections. Knowledge of Adolescent Development. Concrete. This video reviews each factor, why it is important, and how taken together they contribute to young
This PowerPoint teaches participants to define and describe the five protective factors, as well as understand how they can use everyday actions to support families in building their own protective factors. (29 pp)
This PowerPoint, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, comes from the Youth Thrive program and teaches participants to define and describe the five Youth Thrive Protective and Promotive Factors, understand how to use those Factors, and identify ways to use Strengthening Families and Protective Factors Frameworks. (27 pp)
This brief gives an overview of Youth Thrive’s five Protective and Promotive Factors and lists their constructs and core meanings. (2 pp)
This report examines the importance of intentionally and actively targeting protective factors, in addition to risk factors, in an effort to promote healthy development and well-being in youth involved in systems of care.
This brief is a worksheet for trainers to coach workers on the protective and promotive factors. It provides an overview and ways to track worker progress through each factor. (7 pp)
This PowerPoint provides a more in-depth look into the protective factors. It gives examples of what each factor looks like and everyday actions that demonstrate the factors. (12 pp)
This brief is a scoring sheet for Strengthening Families’ protective factors profile. It gauges a participant’s strength level, with regard to each protective factor. Disponible en español. (1 p)
This interactive guide is designed to provide those working with young people—as well as youth themselves and their parents—with questions that stimulate and enrich conversations about the presence of the Youth Thrive Protective and Promotive Factors in a young person’s life, each of which help to reduce risk, increase the likelihood of positive outcomes, and
What is included in the NEW version of the nationally-adopted Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening and Support? Learn about what it means to be a quality Family Strengthening and Support Program building the Protective Factors, and how the revised Standards support programs to advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
This webinar offered an opportunity to reflect on the importance of foundational relationships and how this work can strengthen the protective factors framework and be integrated with your implementation of Strengthening Families.
This webinar focused on supporting family-level protective factors in a family resource center setting. Dr. Malcolm Gaines from San Francisco’s Safe & Sound shared strategies and ways they are innovating.
This brief provides guidance for child welfare domestic violence programs that serve both survivors and offenders, courts, and other collaborative partners about building protective factors that studies show lessen the impact of domestic violence on both child and adult survivors and promote their safety, healing, and well-being. (16 pp)
This document is designed to guide supervisors through an action planning process using the Protective and Promotive Factors. (3pp)
This document is designed to help organizations to use the Protective Factors in developing case plan tasks and activities. (2 pp)
This resource is a brief overview of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework. (2pp)
This brief is a flyer for a trauma-informed, two-day training for providers assisting families on how to live the protective factors. (1 p)
This brief outlines the protective factors and offers in-depth details on their definitions. (2 pp)
This brief is a flyer full of useful information about the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds’ comprehensive suite of training materials for Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework implementation. (2 pp)
This PowerPoint, part of the Strengthening Families Curriculum, teaches about early childhood/adolescent brain development, the significance of nurturing adults, how stress affects children, the impact of child abuse, signs/symptoms of trauma, and a Protective Factors approach for caregivers. (30 pp)
This brief gives an overview of Youth Thrive’s five protective and promotive factors. It lists their constructs and core meanings. (2 pp)
This handout, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, outlines a toolbox of encouraging and supportive models and approaches to help caseworkers build protective factors among the families they serve. (2 pp)
The purpose of this report is to provide a synthesis of the ideas and research from the neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences that further inform the evidence-base of CSSP’s Strengthening Families Approach and Protective Factors Framework.
This brief provides a succinct overview of protective factors approaches to the prevention/treatment of child abuse and neglect. It is designed to teach ways to lessen risks for abuse and neglect. (10 pp)
This brief summarizes survey findings from organizational partners and members of the Strengthening Families National Network interested in using the Protective Factors Framework in their community-level approach and their viewpoints on community conditions that support child and family outcomes. Find the full report here. (7pp)
This report summarizes survey findings from organizational partners and members of the Strengthening Families National Network interested in using the Protective Factors Framework in their community-level approach and their viewpoints on community conditions that support child and family outcomes. Find the executive summary for the report here. (24pp)
This lesson plan, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, is designed to help participants become familiar with the Youth Thrive framework of Protective and Promotive Factors for youth. (21 pp)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, offers a way for workers to identify important strengths of a caregiver. It includes examples of strengths for each protective factor and space to make notes. (2 pp)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, offers sample objectives and sample tasks/activities on using protective factors to develop case plan tasks. It includes a blank chart to be filled out. (2 pp)
This lesson plan, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, will help participants build a deeper knowledge and understanding of the Protective Factors and how to support them through day-to-day interactions with families. (29 pp)
This brief is a flyer for Butterfly TTT LLC, a training and consulting firm specializing in promoting the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework through training, consulting, and technical assistance. (2 pp)
This lesson plan, part of the Strengthening Families Curriculum, is designed to help participants obtain broader understanding of the impact of trauma on brain development and how its effects can be mitigated through a protective factors approach. (21 pp)
This brief for caseworkers provides an overview of the five protective factors, as well as specific advice on how to implement each one. (11 pp)
This brief includes worksheets for workers to reflect on how consistently they take actions that help families and youth build protective and promotive factors through the seven core functions of practice. (8 pp)
This brief survey measures indicators of the Strengthening Families protective factors. The survey is available both in English and Spanish. Disponible en español. (5 pp)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, provides case studies that present four different scenarios. It includes spaces to note the application of protective factors in these situations. (4 pp)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, offers sample objectives and sample tasks/activities on recognizing and acting upon the protective factors. It includes a blank chart to be filled out. (2 pp)
This brief is a guide on how to use café conversations to build leadership, relationships, and the protective factors that help strengthen families. (4 pp)
The goal of café-style conversations is to create an intimate environment where parents, caregivers, and community members can share and support each other as a strategy for strengthening families. (4 pp)
This webinar is about innovative ways Strengthening Families training is being provided around the country, including discussion on online training modules for child welfare system of care workers in West Virginia and online learning activities from the Prevention Board in Wisconsin.
This webinar included segments from one of the training sequences from the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds’ new four-part training, “Let’s Talk About . . . Preventing Child Neglect.” Participants were also introduced to the remaining three training sequences in the series and other valuable resources related to preventing child neglect.
A flyer describing the in-person Training of Trainers from the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds. (1 pp)
Where available, this brief includes links to related resources that States can use to inform specific activities and strategies in response to the PDG B-5 requirements. (11pp)
This brief highlights specific opportunities in the PDG B-5 FOA for States to incorporate Strengthening Families into their applications. (10pp)
This brief was developed to address the shifting focus of prevention work and federal requests for evidence of effectiveness. (13 pp)
This lesson plan, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, is designed to help participants gain understanding of the Strengthening Families approach. (17 pp)
This PowerPoint, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, is a detailed lesson plan designed to help participants become knowledgeable about the four big ideas behind Strengthening Families. (12 pp)
This brief is an implementation manual for PAPF, which was developed as a measure to assess the presence, strength, and growth of parents’ self-reported beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. (111 pp)
This handout, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, emphasizes the cyclical nature Strengthening Families and Youth Thrive. Strong families offer a pathway to children’s well-being, leading to thriving youth, leading to thriving parents, and back again. (1 p)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, allows caseworkers to monitor progress and stay attuned to family changes. The chart can be used to set standards of progress and document growth. (2 pp)
This worksheet, part of the Strengthening Families curriculum, helps identify caregiver strengths. It outlines important strengths and provides a space for a worker to note those strengths and provide feedback. (2 pp)
This brief provides tips on how caseworkers can encourage parental resilience, knowledge of parenting and child development, social connections, support in times of need, and social emotional competence of children. (2 pp)
The five protective factors at the foundation of Strengthening Families are characteristics that have been shown to make positive outcomes more likely for young children and their families, and to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. Learn more about the research-based Protective Factors Framework below. About Strengthening Families and the Protective Factors Framework
This packet includes the research brief about each protective factor as well as an “action sheet” for service providers about their role in supporting families to build each protective factor. The action sheets include what to look for, questions to ask and activities to do with parents related to each protective factor. Download the action sheets for
Throughout CSSP’s Strengthening Families initiative, ZERO TO THREE has been a critical partner in supporting providers to take a strengths-based, protective factors approach to families with infants and toddlers. Today we welcome a guest blog post from Julia Yeary, LCSW, ACSW, IMH-E®, Director of Military Projects at ZERO TO THREE, whose work focuses on supporting
CSSP's Senior Associate Cailin O'Connor provides her reflection about her work with the Strengthening Families Protective Factor Framework as a guest author for HOPE—Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences and explores how by both assessing the strengths of children, families, and communities and measuring positive childhood experiences, we can work to ensure that all families and children have support to ensure positive experiences, promote better outcomes, and combat barriers tied to systemic oppression.