Family Re-Union Outcomes

   Family Re-Union

• Local groups within Tennessee took up the idea of "Care Fairs" -- gatherings held each year before the opening of school that bring together all services for families in one location, giving families better access and giving communities an opportunity to build networks.
• The 800 participants agreed that major changes in policy and programs were essential if families were not going to be torn apart by attempts to "fix" individuals. Senator Gore promised to reconvene the conference the following year to pursue this policy shift.

   Family Re-Union 2: Reinventing Family Policy

• A federal, state and local government effort known as "Partnerships for Stronger Families" which matched federal flexibility in funding with local priorities and local accountability for results. These partnerships provided greater government flexibility for the Indiana Step-Ahead Councils and the Oregon Option.
• At Vice President Gore's request, senior officials of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and Agriculture met to determine how this work applied to their agencies.
• Family-focused principles were used to design the application process for the Community Empowerment initiative, led by Vice President Gore, where local communities could define their own goals and strategies.

   Family Re-Union 3: The Role of Men in
   Children's Lives

• The National Practitioner's Network for Fathers and Families formed to encourage father involvement in fragile families and to support communication among father-focused programs.
• At Vice President Gore's suggestion, the Father to Father network started to support ways men reach out to one another with the intention of becoming better fathers.
• A Funder's Collaborative formed among Annie E. Casey, Danforth, Ford and C.S. Mott foundations which has yielded almost $20 million in new funding for father-focused programs and research.
• The National Center on Fathers and Families issued a report on Family Re-Union 3 and hosts a Round Table Series on research, policy and practice.
• FatherNet, an on-line resource, started up at the University of Minnesota.
• A Presidential Memorandum directed all federal agencies to revise programs, policies, research, and personnel practices so that they proactively strengthen fatherhood wherever appropriate. The successes of the Interagency Working Group, which formed in response to the Memorandum, include: changes in federal housing regulations and efforts to educate Housing Authorities about these changes; redesigned research which actively seeks data on fathers; redesigned requests for proposals that encourage father participation; changed personnel policies that encourage fathers' active participation in their children's lives; Department of Defense strategies to involve absent fathers and encourage father involvement in local schools; increased Head Start efforts to involve fathers in young children's education and in Early Head Start research; and Welfare to Work legislation to help non-custodial parents meet obligations to their children.
• Vice President Gore chaired a May 1995 conference of federal workers to review progress, suggest additional strategies, and learn from best practice.

Family Re-Union 4: Family and Media

• President Clinton endorsed the "V-Chip" legislative proposal that requires a device in all new televisions that enables parents to control their children's access to unsuitable programming.
• Following a White House Summit on Children's Television in 1996, broadcasters voluntarily agreed to a rating system to help parents screen content for children and then improved that rating system in October 1997.
• At a White House Summit on Children's Programming, the industry agreed to provide a minimum of three hours of quality children's programming a week. This plan was adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and went into effect in September 1997.
• The National Institute on Media and the Family, inspired by the conference, was founded in Minnesota and has become an internationally recognized resource on this issue.

Family Re-Union 5: Family and Work

• A proposal to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act so families can participate in their children's schools and take them and elders in the family to medical appointments.
• A "comp time" proposal that would allow workers discretion to take time off in lieu of compensation for overtime work.
• A Presidential Memorandum required all federal agencies and programs to re-examine and rewrite personnel policies to create a "Family Friendly Federal Workplace." The report, “Turning The Key: Unlocking Human Potential in the Family-Friendly Federal Workplace,” was released in 1997.

Family Re-Union 6: Families and Learning

(1) Improve parent-teacher communication and partnerships:

• A national teleconference on family involvement in education, led by Vice President Gore in the fall of 1997, brought together thousands of parents, teachers and educational leaders to identify ways to better prepare teachers to work in partnership with parents on their children's education. Follow up conferences have provided training and materials for teachers, Partners for Learning: Preparing Teachers to Involve Families.
• Approximately 5,000 national and local representatives of education associations have signed on to the Partnership for Family Involvement which helps increase opportunities for family involvement in their children's leaning and supports family/school/community partnerships.
• The Family Education Network, a private sector effort, provides free services to 700 school districts and nearly 6,000 schools to improve teacher-parent communication through technology.

(2) Secure new funding for quality after-school programs:

• Proposed $1 billion in federal funding over five years to give 500,000 children access to quality after-school programs.
• $40 million in grants were awarded in March 1999 to support quality after-school partnerships in more than 300 schools.
• Private sector commitments have skyrocketed: for example, the C.S. Mott Foundation announced up to $55 million for quality after-school programs, training, research and sharing of best practices.
• As part of a nationwide effort to encourage new local partnerships to support after-school programs, Vice President Gore led a national teleconference in April 1998 to discuss how communities can work together to support quality after-school programs.

(3) Involve parents and communities in designing new schools:

• Proposed National Funding for Building and Modernizing Schools includes almost $22 billion over two years in state and local bonds for local public schools.
• Vice President Gore has led parents and communities in a series of forums to discuss how they want their schools to be built and modernized.
• Vice President Gore and Secretary of Education Richard Riley convened a National Symposium on Designing Schools as Centers of Community in October 1998 to bring together parents, teachers, community leaders, education reformers, and architects.

Family Re-Union 7: Families and Health

• A Presidential Memorandum directing the Departments of the Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education and the Social Security Administration to implement over 150 initiatives designed to enroll eligible but uninsured children in the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.
• Building on this effort to insure eligible but uninsured children, the administration launched "Insure Kids Now" with the toll free number 1-877-KIDS-NOW and a public/private educational campaign.
• Vice President Gore announced new Medicare coverage of tests and education for diabetes and osteoporosis.
• Vice President Gore announced the creation of a nation-wide public/private Medicare alliance of over 80 national organizations to help families understand the new options, preventive benefits, and consumer protections
• The Health Care Financing Administration announced a new Internet site www.medicare.gov including an interactive database on health plan options.
• Major foundations including Robert Wood Johnson, Annie E. Casey, and Nathan Cummings are discussing the need to address the intersection of family, health and community programming and philanthropy.
• The federal Center for Mental Health Services and the National Cancer Institute co-sponsored a historic meeting to formally acknowledge the mental health impact of a parent's physical or mental illness on a child.
• President Clinton proposed new measures to help Americans care for family members with long term care needs, including long-term care tax credits, a family caregiver support program, a new national network to help states create one-stop shops so caregivers can better access community resources, and a proposal that the federal government use its market leverage to set an example by offering private long-term care insurance to federal employees.
• As they committed at Family Re-Union 7, the Department of Defense has established Healthcare Consumer Consortia at its 588military treatment facilities, posted quality report cards in the lobbies of its hospitals and is expanding its Put Prevention into Practice Program into the Military Health System.
• Vice President Gore announced an effort, now called "BOOST 4 Kids", with the National Partnership for Reinventing Government and pilot communities to build on San Diego County's flexible, interagency, results-focused health care strategies and "outcome measures" of success.
• The design and planning process for Vanderbilt University's new Children's Hospital was strongly influenced by the conference and planned to be one of the nation's most family-centered facilities. Vanderbilt hosted the first national conference on Family Resource Centers in pediatric health care settings in March 1999.
• The Institute for Family Centered Care helped the federal Office of Personnel Management redesign a 1999 survey for 9 million federal employees, so dozens of health plans can assess how the federal employees' and retirees' health benefits program is family-centered.