Family-Centered Attitudes and Actions in Youth Care and Special Education: Development and Evaluation of a New Measuring Instrument

Background: Family involvement in youth care and special education is referred to as family-centered practice (FCP). Research on FCP, for example in relation to the effectiveness of youth care and special education, is challenged by a lack of validated instruments that measure youth professionals’ family-centered attitudes and actions that is applicable across multiple settings and professions in youth care and special education. 

Objective: The overall aim of the current study was to develop and empirically evaluate a comprehensive, multi-dimensional measure to assess family centered practice in residential youth care: the 40-item Family-Centered Attitudes and Actions Scale (FAAS).

Methods: We developed the 40-item FAAS in collaboration with field experts, using our systematic review on FCP in residential youth care as the foundation for the scale. Youth professionals in various Dutch welfare settings (N = 279) completed the FAAS. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to adjust the scale until we established satisfactory model fit and analyzed the psychometric properties of the adjusted scale. Results: CFA confirmed the four proposed dimensions: Whole Family Empowerment, Shared Decision-Making Analysis, Parent-Child Contact, and Family-Staff Alliance. The adjusted 27-item FAAS shows sufficient internal consistency and convergent validity, correlating positively with professionals’ self-efficacy and organizational support regarding the implementation FCP. 

Conclusions: Our findings provide initial evidence that the 27-item FAAS is an internally consistent measure of youth professionals’ family-centered attitudes and actions and show preliminary evidence of convergent validity. The FAAS has the potential to contribute to knowledge about the effectiveness of FCP in youth care and special education.