Family Preservation Services

“Keeping Families Safely Together” 

Family Preservation Services (FPS) is a crisis-intervention program designed to prevent unnecessary out-of-home placements of children and youth.  Funded by a grant from the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), and based on a nationally known Homebuilders model, the program is part of the State’s effort to provide alternatives to out-of-home care.  From the program’s inception in Atlantic County in 1990 through September 2006, FPS received more than 900 referrals and served over 700 Atlantic County Families.

FPS offers brief, intensive, time-limited, home and community-based individual and family counseling, skill-building, crisis intervention and concrete services to improve family functioning and child well-being. Family members typically learn new skills in parenting and childcare, communication, anger and stress management.  Upon completion of the program, families are linked to longer-term community resources when needed (as available).  Line staff caseloads are limited to two families at a time to allow staff to provides services at the family’s convenience and be available in the event of a crisis 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The typical FPS family will receive an average of seven to ten hours of direct face-to-face services for about five weeks, working on accomplishing two to four goals established in consultation with their referring worker.  Families receive a minimum of five and as many as twenty hours of face-to-face service during each full week of intervention.  Services can last as long as eight weeks, or as few as two weeks in the case of a “booster” (a referral within a year of termination from the program for the same  child/children and for the same reason for referral).

According to our contract with the Division, eligible families must have:

An active case with the Division of Youth and Family Services

At least one child (from newborns to age 17) either at imminent risk of out-of-home placement or in the process of returning to the family (within four weeks) from and out-of-home placement.

  Exhausted or be unable to wait for less-intensive services, and

One parent or guardian willing to voluntarily accept the program.

The DYFS case manager typically completes the referral (although another social service professional working with the family may initiate the referral from time to time), which is then reviewed for appropriateness by a DYFS “screener”. (Please contact the FPS program manager for information regarding eligibility  criteria an appropriateness) FPS keeps no waiting list, and accepts families on a "first come, first served" basis.

FPS is staffed by a team of three Bachelor’s level in-home counselors ("preservationists") and a program manager, Michael A. Michnya, M.Ed., L.P.C. For more information, contact him at (609)569-0239 ext 1118.  To make a referral, contact the Division of Youth and Family Services at (609) 441-3164 and ask for an FPS Screener.