National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center : Direct Service Programs : Directory : FamilyConnections

The Source - Spring 2008
This issue focuses on economic self-sufficiency for families affected by HIV and/or substance abuse. More...

Strengthening Connections Conference Archive
This conference highlighted the unique parenting challenges among families affected by substance abuse, HIV and/or incarceration, and the importance of the parent-child relationship in a child’s development. More...

2008 Teleconference Training Series
The Resource Center will host six trainings beginning in April 2008. The topics include the effects of methamphetamine, mental health services for women living with HIV and their children, and working with Latino families. More...

Assessing and Supporting Parenting in Families Affected by Substance Abuse or HIV (2007)
This guidebook provides practitioners and administrators with guidance in assessing, supporting, and strengthening parenting skills and parent-child relationships. [PDF]

National Abandoned Infants
Assistance Resource Center
University of California, Berkeley
1950 Addison Street, Suite 104 # 7402
Berkeley, CA 94720-7402
Phone: (510) 643-8390
Fax: (510) 643-7019
E-mail: aia@berkeley.edu

CRADLES
825 East 53rd ½ St., Building E-101
Austin, TX 78751
Phone: (512) 478-5725 x217
Fax: (512) 474-2626
Email: trivera@familyconnectionsonline.org
Website: http://www.familyconnectionsonline.org/

Project Director
Trish Taylor Rivera, LSW

Project Evaluator
Holly C. VanScoy, MSW, PhD

Sponsoring Organization
FamilyConnections

Description:
The Collaboration to Reduce Abandonment and Deliver Local Education and Supports (CRADLES) serves infants in Austin, TX who have been or are at risk of being abandoned by mothers who are affected by HIV, substance abuse, and/or other serious physical, mental health, or social problems. Incorporating a community-based, family-focused approach, CRADLES is dedicated to developing a local system to insure that infants born in this community have safe, nurturing, and permanent homes. CRADLES reunifies parents and infants who have been separated, as well as insuring that infants whose birth parents are not able to provide them with permanent care quickly become part of permanent families who can appropriately care for them into early adulthood. This project is the result of a partnership between FamilyConnections and Any Baby Can, two agencies serving at-risk pregnant women, infants, young children, and their families, and a number of other community collaborators including hospitals and clinics, child welfare, early childhood development and the District Attorney’s office.

CRADLES includes a robust three-tiered, multivariate evaluation of the project’s processes, outcomes, and contexts that is formative and summative in character, using a range of qualitative and quantitative data about the infants, their natural and/or adoptive families, the service delivery system, and the larger community context along with information on the attainment of expected (and unanticipated) outcomes, objectives, and goals.