Family Services Unit

Dad with toddler

The goal of the Family Services Unit (FSU) is to enhance community safety by reducing intergenerational criminal behavior, promoting positive change in offenders, and impacting family relationships that affect recidivism and compliance with conditions of supervision.

Vision

The Family Services Unit's vision is to:

  • Intervene in the intergenerational cycle of criminal behavior
  • Provide effective intervention, treatment and supervision strategies for families with more than one member on Community Justice caseloads, and offenders living with young children
  • Build on existing DCJ successes -- building genuine relationships, teaching family problem-solving, culturally and gender-responsive services

Staff Specializations

The Family Services Unit Staff will:

  • Receive specialized family training
  • Work in partnership with other service providers, including community health nurses, Adult and Family Services (AFS), Services to Children and Families (SCF), and other agencies
  • Use a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary team strategy
  • Build on existing successful multi-agency strategies, including Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prenatal Treatment (ADAPT) & Juvenile Support Project

Duties

The Family Services Unit's duties include:

  • Post-prison, parole and probation supervision
  • Assessment of families accepted to unit, determining their strengths, needs, and criminogenic factors
  • Coordinated case planning for youth and adults through a team approach, including the Probation Officer, Corrections Counselor, Juvenile Court Counselor, & other agencies
  • Development of, and referral to community resources, such as family & parenting skills, childcare, housing, corporate support
  • Development of a community support system, to help look beyond the term of supervision

The ADAPT multi-disciplinary team provides comprehensive services to high and medium risk pregnant offenders based on criminogenic needs, including linkages to transitional housing, parenting classes, gender specific groups and short-term sanctions.

Subject Areas

The Family Services Unit will focus on these subject areas:

  • Coordinated Case Plans
  • Family Addiction
  • Kids Witnessing Violence
  • Modeling Behavior
  • Parenting Skills
  • Skill Development through Cognitive Restructuring
  • Support Systems for Children Following DCJ Arrest of Parent

Caseload

The Family Services Unit will supervise juvenile and adult offenders.

Guidelines for Adult Offenders Central Intake

  • The parent of a child on juvenile caseload (except diversion), whether or not they are living together
  • Partners, siblings or relatives that live with clients involved in the Family Services Unit or who are on a juvenile caseload
  • Pregnant female offenders (In addition to those pregnant female offenders supervised at the Family Services Unit, ADAPT Community Health Nurses also work with pregnant female offenders not supervised by the Family Services Unit)
  • Offenders convicted of non-sexual offenses where a child is the victim, and the offender is living with or working toward reunification with a child
  • Offenders living with a youngest child under the age of 7
  • Offenders actively working in a formal process towards re-unification with a child age 6 or under who is in child welfare (DHS) custody.
  • Offender returning from state prison who living with or seeking to regain custody of children under the age of 18
    • Exceptions: FSU does not supervise offenders if their primary or prominent offending behavior is related to gang behavior, domestic violence, sex offenders or severe mental health, those cases should be routed to our specialty units.

Guidelines for Adult Offenders Transfer from the field

  • Pregnant female offenders that are in the 1st or 2nd trimester (first 6 months of pregnancy) intending to parent the child
  • Offenders with six months or more remaining on supervision who are living with a youth who has been placed on Juvenile probation.

Guidelines for Juvenile Offenders

  • Youth placed on formal probation for 6 months or more who are living with parents or siblings who are on supervision to ACJ
  • Youth who are actively parenting children
  • Pregnant females
  • Youth, whose parent is on supervision not living with, but maintain routine contact.
  • Youth who are eligibly for the Drug Diversion Program

FSU Partnerships

Health Department
Community Health Nurses
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prenatal Treatment (ADAPT) Team

Family Support Project
Adult Family Services (AFS) Self Sufficiency
Department of Human Services (DHS) Child Welfare
Housing Authority of Portland (HAP)

Community
Metropolitan Family Services
Portland Relief Nursury
Volunteers Of America (VOA)
Project Network

Contact

Lonnie Nettles
Community Justice Manager
503-988-4778