FAMILY RE-UNION PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE:

Background and History of Family Re-Union

Family Re-Union is a policy initiative highlighted by a series of annual conferences, moderated by Al and Tipper Gore. Since 1992, the conferences have brought together families and those who work with them and their children to discuss and design better ways to strengthen family life. Each year leaders from the public, private and non-profit sectors and community-based practitioners have come together to promote creative partnerships and effective strategies that help children and families thrive. These meetings have provided those who make policy at the local, state and federal level a wonderful opportunity to learn from the experiences of families. Out of the conferences have come not only new insights, but also significant public and private commitments and concrete actions and results. In every case, the networking that occurs before, during and after the conference has resulted in both important national alliances and a newly energized cadre of advocates determined to support this work. Among the many outcomes of Family Re-Union, participants have created new national organizations, major federal, state and local policy changes, a new academic course of study and countless new strategies for bridging old barriers for families. Numerous programs, policies and new partnerships have been inspired or influenced by this process. Some of the outcomes of previous conferences can be seen on the conference website, www.familyreunion.org.

Family ReUnion: An Approach to Family Centered Community Building

The Family Re-Union initiative is grounded in the belief that programs and policies should respond to the needs of children, families and communities and should build on their strengths. Instead of focusing on the pathologies of individuals, the initiative examines the assets and needs of whole families and their communities and seeks to identify successful strategies and explore promising approaches for building upon and enhancing those assets and responding to those needs.

In some years the organizing theme of the initiative has been the interface of families with systems: the health care system (families and health), the education system (families and learning), the economic system (families and work), and the "information system" (families and media).

In other years, the discussions took family structure as a starting point, focusing on a particular family member (families and seniors; families and fathers), and emphasizing the special roles they play in family life and the ways in which these individual members both empower and are empowered by their families.

Family ReUnion 8, Family and Community, took the analysis one step further, recognizing that just as our ability to respond to the needs of individuals benefits from the focus on individuals as a part of, rather than apart from, families, so too would we benefit by focusing on families as a part of community.

The most recent gathering, Families and Youth, focused on the critical importance of recognizing young people as active parts of both family and community life. When children and youth are paired in a sustained positive relationships with caring adults, community initiatives that build skills in young people and provide them with opportunities for civic engagement and leadership, result in positive outcomes for youth, their families, and their communities.

Eleven years of convening a diverse group of people from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives has contributed to an emerging a policy and practice framework that is best encompassed by the term "family-centered community development." From this developing multidisciplinary field of research and action emerge some central themes, values, principles, that are essential elements of family-centered community development, including the following:

· That human beings have an unstoppable drive to be part of a family and that to deny a person a family is to deny them an essential human behavior.

· That families define themselves in unique ways that reflect their context and vision-that there are a variety of ways in which families form and a variety of structures that provide opportunities for family membership.

· That families are the first place of support for individuals, the primary transmitter of culture, the primary teacher of values.

· That there is reciprocity between families and all other community institutions- communities are made up of the families that live within their boundaries, and so are shaped by family conditions and well-being. When families do well, everyone does well.

· That a family is at its best when all members can experience connection, competence and contribution-connection of family members to each other and to the broader community, including community based resources and partnerships essential to success; competence in their roles as parents, workers, students, and citizens, able to meet needs, and pursue opportunities, and effectively participate in community life; and contribution to improvement of self, family and community.

Structuring The Second Decade of Family ReUnion

For the first decade of Family ReUnion, the initiative was structured to take maximum advantage of the commitment of Senator Gore and then Vice President Gore to the initiative. The eight years that the Gores were in the White House provided a special opportunity to affect federal policy directly and to benefit from the unique ability of a sitting Vice President to promote public discussion and raise public awareness and concern about the challenges facing America's families. Not surprisingly, those recruited to participate in Family ReUnion during the first decade included many White House staff and Federal agency leaders. The setting and format provided an unusual opportunity for family members and in-the-trenches program staff to be heard and to join with national leaders in the public and private sectors to shape the national family policy agenda.

Since leaving public office, the Gores have continued to be strong advocates for progressive family policy. In their critically acclaimed book "Joined at the Heart," they have brought together much of the teaching of Family ReUnion, including many of the family stories that have informed the initiative over the years. In his new role, Professor Gore has collaborated with many of his Family ReUnion colleagues to develop, promote and pilot a curriculum for a course in Family Centered Community Building. And the Gores continue to be committed to Family ReUnion as a venue for exploring policies, practices and strategies that support family-centered community development.

Now in its second decade, Family ReUnion seeks to build on the first decade of learning and, through the targeting of a specific audience-those engaged in or interested in engaging in higher education and community partnerships in low income communities-to create a sustainable structure for broader development, dissemination and implementation of family centered community building strategies.

The Focus on Families and Economic Success

Each of the past Family ReUnion gatherings has included some focus on the ways in which the particular topic of the conference impacts and is being addressed in low-income communities. However, there is increasing concern that our nation's rhetorical commitment to families and children-that families are the bedrock institution in our democratic society; that if parents work hard and play by the rules, they should be able to provide a safe and nurturing environment and a promising future for their children and grandchildren; and that no child should be left behind-stands in sharp contrast to the experiences of children and families in too many low income and modest income communities, both rural and urban.

Policies are being promulgated and practices are being pursued and supported at national, state and local levels, without broad public understanding and appreciation of the impact those policies and practices on families who are struggling to achieve self sufficiency and provide for the basic needs of themselves and their children. This year's "Kids Count" published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation included disturbing findings about the "very high cost of being poor"-that paradoxically it is often the case that those with the lowest incomes face much higher costs for basic goods and services than those with higher incomes. Not only is it "more expensive to be poor", but often support services are structured in ways that create significant obstacles for those families trying to work their way out of poverty-often a family's incremental steps toward increasing earned income are offset by corresponding decreases in support and assistance.

The human costs of poverty-the impact on the well being of family members and the toll it takes on communities deprived of their productive potential-continue to be well documented. Each year the Kids Count Data "confirms the fundamental link between poverty and negative outcomes-illness, academic failure, early pregnancy-outcomes that can powerfully diminish a child's chances of adult achievement and success." Just recently, a study of the impact of the influx of funds into a number of native American communities found that when the proceeds of this economic activity (in these cases resulting from casino gambling on tribal lands) are distributed among tribal families in ways that bring families out of poverty (even if only modestly so) children in those families experience a significant decrease in a range of mental health and behavioral problems.

While an increase in family income does not solve every problem, there is no more important family policy discussion than one focused on addressing the challenges of moving families from poverty to self-sufficiency. As the Kid's Count report concludes, strengthening our nation's most vulnerable families and, in particular, increasing the ability of those families to "provide some real economic security for their kids" is among the most promising strategies for improving outcomes for children.

Part of the work of Family ReUnion will therefore necessitate a focus on some key questions:

· What does our research and the experience of families and those working with them in the field tell us about the problems faced by these families, the impact of present policies and practices, and effective and promising approaches for responding to these families and helping increase opportunities for sustainable economic success?

· What are the special challenges facing families in rural communities and how do we ensure that our work is relevant to these families?

· What have we learned about how economically disadvantaged communities develop partnerships and collaborations to implement family-centered development strategies?

· How do they make use of critical resources such as higher education?

· How is it that, despite what our research and experience have shown us and despite at least a rhetorical consensus about the importance of supporting and strengthening families and family life, current policies continue to leave large numbers of families and children under great economic stress and often actually undermine the effectiveness of the support that is available?

· How do we develop, support and strengthen family life in economically disadvantaged communities with the knowledge, resources and capacity that we have at our disposal while at the same time engaging effectively in and promoting the kind of broad public discussion necessary to ensure national, state and local policies that align with the broadly shared commitment of Americans to ensuring every family and every child a fair chance.

Background and History of Family Re-Union

Of course, equally important to the discussion of these questions is the creation of an opportunity for the discussion to lead to action. And it is for this reason that Family ReUnion has chosen to focus on promotion and support of higher education-community partnerships engaged in family centered community building in low-income communities.

The decision to focus on Higher Education-Community partnerships builds on our past work and keeps faith with commitments made in previous years.

Family ReUnion 8, Families and Communities, resulted in the formation of the National Community and Academic Consortium. It was that Consortium that spawned the course in Family-Centered Community Building that has been taught by Professor Gore at Fisk, MTSU and UCLA.

This focus is also consistent with the commitment made at the Family ReUnion 11 Conference to make the promotion of youth involvement and youth engagement a priority of future Family ReUnion activities. Collaboratives between communities and institutions of higher learning provide opportunities for community service and civic engagement for students, in ways that both recognize the considerable present capacities of young students to make an impact and that support the development of additional skills and insights to enhance those capacities.

This is also a particularly opportune time for Family ReUnion to focus on Higher Education-Community collaborations. Federal, state and local budget cuts are adding to the challenges faced by families in already struggling communities (many of those communities within a stone's throw of a university or college). Highly partisan rhetoric is characterizing the political debate (something not likely to improve during a presidential election year). This limits the potential in the short term of Family ReUnion activities focused primarily on engaging federal, state or local governmental officials in a discussion of family policy issues.

On the other hand, there is on college and university campuses today increasing interest in and support for volunteer opportunities, civic engagement and service learning experiences for students. In addition, there is a growing recognition by some universities and colleges that they cannot thrive unless the communities in which they are located and in which their employees live are succeeding. Even colleges and universities that are themselves under financial strain might find advantages in better aligning their research, teaching and service missions with the needs of the communities around them. It is therefore reasonable to believe that by focusing on the role of universities and colleges we could foster increased activity in the higher education community in researching, developing, promoting, and participating in the implementation of strategies for strengthening families.

Colleges and universities have, of course, already been a source of many of the expert participants in previous Family ReUnion gatherings (faculty, students and community members with whom they work) and much of the research and program examples that have informed previous Family ReUnion activities. However, the focus on higher education-community collaboratives not only allows us to draw on many of the key participants from past years, but allows us to expand the Family ReUnion family considerably by linking with additional universities and colleges that are engaged with their communities as part of other national initiatives, such as COPC and Campus Compact, that encourage effective engagement between the institutions of higher learning and communities. This is a great opportunity to connect with these colleges and universities individually and through their umbrella organizations, to learn from their experiences in the "theory and practice" of community engagement, and to encourage these collaboratives to consider whether they might be more effective by, among other things, exploring ways to embrace a family centered approach.

Consistent with the learning of the past eleven years of the FR initiative, we are seeking effective strategies for promoting collaboratives between communities and institutions of higher education that:

· are strength based-that recognize that there are assets, resources, and untapped potential in even the most challenged communities;

· are family-centered-that employ aspects of the principles of family-centered community development; that make the resources of colleges and universities-particularly the human resources of faculty and students-more accessible to families and community systems;

· have potential for establishing sustainable relationships between communities and institutions of higher learning in ways that will contribute to enhanced structures, approaches, and policies that can become a vehicle for other family-centered community development collaboratives;

· engage youth and young adults in building their capacities as leaders of family centered community building efforts and as effective and engaged advocates for family centered policies and practices, by providing sustained positive youth-adult relationships, skill building opportunities for youth, and opportunities for youth participation and community leadership;

· advance the development of family-centered development as a model for community improvement, and as a curriculum, field of study and focus of future research that is essential to building the evidentiary base for new, family-centered policy decisions;

· that encourages broader dissemination of the Family Centered Community Building course curriculum for use by other colleges and universities in creating and promoting family centered research, teaching, and service across disciplines in both undergraduate and graduate programs.