How to Start a Family Justice or Multi-Agency Center in Your Community
This presentation was recorded during a live session of the Virtual 2021 Annual International Family Justice Center Conference. The rapidly developing movement toward multi-agency collaboration, co-located services, mergers of agencies, shared office space models, and Family Justice Centers is getting the attention of non-profit agency leaders and funders across the country. Alliance for HOPE International provides training, consulting, and strategic planning services to government agencies and community-based agencies seeking to create Family Justice Centers or other types of Multi-Agency Centers that bring together, under one roof, professionals and volunteers working with victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, elder abuse, and human trafficking. The power of these collective impact approaches is indisputable. Collective impact work increases access to justice and services, produces higher Hope and Resiliency Scores in the lives of survivors and their children, and creates a longer-term community after the crisis.
The real questions are: Where should an agency start with such partnerships? Is a community ready for a comprehensive Family Justice Center model or are there preliminary steps toward collaborative approaches that should be taken first? What agencies have the necessary relationships in a community to come together and what agencies are not ready for such a model?
Join Alliance for HOPE International President, Casey Gwinn; CEO, Gael Strack; and Interim Family Justice Center Alliance Director, Raeanne Passantino, as they provide an overview of the key steps in starting a Multi-Agency Model, a co-located services approach, or a Family Justice Center in your community. They will address community readiness, getting buy-in, developing the vision, dreaming big, and starting small.
What is the next step for your agency? What should be the plan be in your community? What agency is best positioned to lead the effort? Or should a new shared leadership model be created to help launch the vision. Casey and Gael will share lessons learned and talk about resources the Alliance has available to help communities get started in moving down the road toward greater collective impact.
