What We Do
We specialize in providing supportive services for individuals and families with emotional, behavioral or developmental struggle so they can live safely and successfully at home. Our services also focus on coordinating and helping provide the support needed to help individuals return from formal out-of-home service settings such as hospitals, residential treatment centers, group homes or detention centers back to their local communities. Our support is community-based, not office-based. We work in family homes, schools, local community centers, and other places that are the most natural setting because we believe this is where we can be the most successful.
Rather than providing services only during traditional office hours, we work when and where families need us the most. This often includes working early mornings, evenings, weekends, and holidays.
CFSS offers services in several geographic areas throughout the state of Arizona. Please visit our locations page for more information.
We value the dignity, independence and unique personal culture of every individual and family we serve. We believe that no matter how difficult a person’s past or present struggles, and no matter how long their journey toward healing and fulfillment, there is always hope. We deliver our support services in a timely manner and consistently seek to evaluate and improve our approaches. We actively recruit a diverse workforce that displays a talent and passion for working with children, young adults, and families.
CFSS Pillars of Support
The framework CFSS has developed for the all of the services it provides is called the “Pillars of Support.”
The foundation of this framework is a family’s culture, strengths, preferences and community connections. These areas are the building materials for everything else that happens with the family. No individual pillar may be created or strengthened without a link to strengths, preferences, community connections and culture.
The five pillars in the Pillars of Support are areas we believe are important universally to every child, adolescent, young adult or family in order to be happy and to successfully reach their goals in life. These areas represented by the five pillars provide the day to day strength needed to deal with life’s ups and downs. The five pillars are:
- Hope – Really believing that things will be ok in the future is the essence of hope. Hope involves the way we view the stories we tell our selves about where we have come from in our lives and where we are going. It involves discovering who we are as people and what our purpose is in life. Hope provides the fire needed to fuel all other positive actions.
- Relationships – Everyone needs at least one meaningful relationship in their life. It doesn’t have to be with a parent or a sibling, but it may. As long as there is one person in our life that believes in us unconditionally, who we can talk to about anything without worry of losing them, and who would be there for us in the middle of the night if we need them, our chances of doing better in life go up dramatically. The other relationships in our life are important as well, and learning to have meaningful and helpful relationships with others is vital.
- Physical well-being – for many years, people have not fully appreciated the link between emotional and physical health. Research is discovering more evidence all the time of the strong connection between the two. When we do not feel well physically, we make decisions we would never make otherwise. Sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management and many other important ways of caring for ourselves physically is an important pillar of support.
- Skills – Being good at doing things helps us in many ways. We feel good about our contributions to the world when we learn helpful skills and we are better able to navigate, survive, work within and enjoy our lives. Some skills are relational or social, some are internal (such as self-motivation or self-checking), and others are external (such as doing the laundry, preparing a meal or building a bird feeder). We believe helping developing skills of all types that are of interest to children, youth and families is one of the most important things we can do to support others.
- Enjoyable activities – Quality of life is sometimes the first thing to suffer when children or families experience stress and challenges. It is also one of the most important ways to restore balance to life and to help things go right more often. We work with others to discover and successfully carry out enjoyable activities because it helps with overall emotional and behavioral health as much as any other approach. We also work to help individuals and families develop a respected role in their communities, find ways to make more choices and direct their lives, and develop a life that has meaning and is worth living.
If there are weaknesses in any of these pillars or if they are out of balance in some way, it is important for us to work together on strengthening and bringing the balance back into alignment.
All services provided by CFSS focus on The Pillars of Support. They help us understand together the way life looks right now and how those we work with envision it being in the future. The Pillars of Support also help us create a plan in partnership with each family about how to make the vision of the future a reality. The work carried out each day by employees of CFSS is focused on the unique plan created by each family and on how to improve the strength and stability of each pillar using the essential elements found in the foundation.
Check out some examples of how these principles come to life as we work with children, young adults and families.
Check out some outcomes of these services in our work with children, young adults and families.
Or, find out how to get services from CFSS.
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