Your attitudes toward families affect your behaviors with them. When approaching your work with families around economic mobility, it is important to remember the following strengths-based attitudes:

• Families are the experts of their own lives and their own experiences.
• Families come with wisdom, ideas, and solutions.
• Families work very hard.
• Every individual, group, family, and community has strengths and resources that come into play in the midst of both joys and stress, successes and hardships, growth and setbacks. Value, respect, and recognize families' full humanity and the relationships from which they draw strength.
• Your job is not to change or fix people. Your job is to partner with families and support them, where they are and when they are ready.
• There are systemic forces and barriers that cause poverty and financial hardship. Families are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

Learn More with These Resources

• Building Partnerships: Guide to Developing Relationships with Families (article)
• Strategies for Family Engagement: Attitudes and Practices (article)
• Family Engagement and Cultural Perspectives: Applying Strength-based Attitudes (guide)

Last Updated: October 5, 2023