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Cornell Family Development Credential Program Empirical Foundations by Claire Forest The Cornell Family Development Credential system emerged from Bronfenbrenner et al.’s landmark 1977-81 cross-cultural Comparative Ecology of Human Development study (Cochran & Henderson, 1986). In this study, which was colloquially called “Family Matters”, Cornell Professors Dr. Urie Bronfenbrenner, Dr. Moncrieff Cochran, Dr. William Cross, Jr. and research statistician Charles R. Henderson, Jr. studied the intersections between families and communities that led Bronfenbrenner (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) to refine his then emerging theory of the “ecology of human development”, which he described as lying “at a point of convergence among the disciplines of the biological, psychological, and social sciences as they bear on the evolution of the individual in society.” The “Family Matters” study showed how children and parents develop in relation with families, neighbors, relatives, schools and workplaces, and influences of society. When Bronfenbrenner talked about “the ecology of human development” he was referring to settings where people live, work, study, play and interact with other people, as well as the indirect influences of society like public policy that makes it hard for families to afford good child care or health care. Bronfenbrenner developed the scientific terms micro-system, macro-system, meso-system, and exo-system to describe the expanding circles people live and grow in. Through his observations within the Family Matters study, Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director Professor Moncrieff Cochran described the developmental stages of an “empowerment process” involving individuals with “progressively more distant environmental systems." He wrote, “We propose that positive changes in self-perception (Stage I) permit the alteration of relations with members of the household or immediate family (Stage II), which is followed by the establishment and maintenance of new relations with more distant relatives and friends (Stage III). Stage IV is seen as information gathering related to broader community involvement, followed in Stage V by change-oriented community action.” [1] In other words, as people change the way they look at themselves, their relationships with themselves, immediate family, and extended family and friends change. They gather information about how they might improve their own situation as well as their community’s, and often ultimately get involved in making a difference. The cornerstone of the empowerment approach is that empowerment is not something anyone can do for someone else, nor can it be forced. Empowerment happens when people set their own goals. The role of helping systems, whether family, friends, or agencies, is to support that goal not to set it for the person. From 1981-93 Forest, as Family Matters Dissemination Director, translated Family Matters research into curricula which Cornell Cooperative Extension and other public agencies used to infuse these concepts into their work with families. In 1994 the New York State’s Council on Children and Families recognized the potential importance of Bronfenbrenner’s, Cochran’s, and Forest’s work to the state’s family policy. The New York State Council on Children and Families, which had recently convened a Commissioners Work Group on Family Support representing the fifteen major state family-serving agencies, to consider ways to reorient the state’s family policy toward the strengths-based partnership approach, sought Cornell’s expertise. Cochran and Forest met with this group, which recommended establishing the statewide interagency Family Development Credential (FDC) to teach front-line family workers how to apply this paradigm shift in the state’s work with families and communities. Beginning in 1994 New York State Department of State provided funding and policy support to Cornell to develop the interagency Family Development Credential (FDC) system and operate it in perpetuity. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided additional support to infuse the FDC into existing New York State systems and community colleges, as well as establishing mechanisms to help other states launch similar systems. As envisioned a decade ago by this collaboration between state policy makers and Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, today the Cornell Family Development Credential program continues to draw upon this original research foundation to provide frontline workers with the knowledge and skills they need to coach families to set and reach their own goals for healthy self-reliance in their communities. The interagency FDC program is available in communities across the state to frontline workers from all public, private and non-profit service systems (e.g. home visitors, case managers, family resource center workers, community health workers, and teacher aides). To date, 4,500 front-line workers in New York State have earned the Cornell FDC; thousands more have earned the FDC through affiliated systems in other states. The FDC curriculum Empowerment Skills for Family Workers (Dean, 1996, updated Forest 2003) teaches credentialed workers to help families and communities apply lessons learned the Family Matters research, as well as other studies at Cornell and elsewhere. Many families coached by these agency workers live in what Cornell researcher Dr. James Garbarino calls “socially toxic environments”—communities or family environments overshadowed by poverty, drugs or alcohol, joblessness, homelessness, poor education, and chaos[i], so his suggestions are incorporated. Empowerment Skills for Family Workers teaches workers to help families map their stresses and supports using an adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, called the Family Circles model. This adaptation uses everyday language to describe what Bronfenbrenner called micro-system, macro-system, meso-system, and exo-system, and adds an encompassing outer circle called “the natural environment.” The addition of the outermost circle in Forest's Family Circles model incorporates Bronfenbrenner's conceptual evolution of human development from an "ecological" to a "bioecological" model (Bronfenbrenner, 2001) Having observed Bronfenbrenner’s own joyful interaction with the natural environment over the two and a half decades they worked together, and his passionately protective, socially engaged interaction with the ecosystem forces that often attempt to put business interests ahead of the needs of growing humans as well as the natural environment that contains them, Forest asked him, as they walked together across the Cornell campus beneath vibrant autumnal colors after he had retired, whether this omission of the encompassing natural environment from his nested systems theory was intentional. His explanation was that this omission reflected the lens created by his intimate relationship with nature, which had caused him to “not see the forest for the trees” (Bronfenbrenner, 2001). Forest’s Family Circles adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s original model also honors his commitment to translational research. (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000): 1. Devising new alternative hypotheses and corresponding research designs that not only call existing results into question but also stand a chance of yielding new, more differentiated, more precise, replicable research findings and thereby producing more valid scientific knowledge. 2. Providing scientific bases for the design of effective social policies and programs that can counteract newly emerging developmentally disruptive influences. This has been an explicit objective of the Bio-ecological model from its earliest beginnings. The Family Development Credential system that emerged from, and elaborated on, Bronfenbrenner’s theories, also reflects his commitment to using research to “design…effective social policies and programs that can counteract newly emerging developmentally disruptive influences.”
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