Guiding Questions & Key Lessons

The Touchpoints Approach offers a powerful opportunity to make meaningful, positive change for children and families. Making the commitment to become a Touchpoints site is the first step. We offer guiding questions and key lessons to help you and your partners to begin the planning and identify the support essential to a successful Touchpoints Program.

Why do you want to become a Touchpoints site?

• What need have you identified in your community (or department, organization, or system of care) that Touchpoints may address? Your needs may be direct and/or indirect.
• What changes do you hope to see? What are the benefits for children and families, your organization, and your site partners?
• How does the Touchpoints Approach fit with the mission of your organization(s)?

Who do you want to impact?

• Who are the families in your community that you want to impact? How many?
• Who are the providers working with these children and families that you need to train in order to bring about your desired outcomes for the families? How many?

Who will your site partners be?

• Who else thinks that bringing Touchpoints to your community is a good idea?
• Who are your potential site partners? Who else is serving the same families as you? (Partners may be inside a department in an organization, an entire organization, across multiple organizations, or within systems of care.)
• What commitment will your site partners make? (Consider training, planning, funding, implementing, political support, employee release time, administrative support, etc.)

What leadership buy-in do you need?

• What approval authority do you need to secure?
• Do you have the support of your leadership?
• Do your site partners have the support of their leadership?
• How will you initially engage leadership and sustain that engagement?

What human, financial and other resources do you need?

• Who will coordinate Touchpoints activities and what resources will support that person’s time?
• Will your Touchpoints team members have compensated time for planning, training, mentoring, team meetings and travel?
• What financial resources do you need? Consider the investment in preparatory Touchpoints training and mentoring, trainers’ compensation, training materials and supplies, travel expenses, ongoing opportunities for professional development? What release time will training participants need?
• What will the sources of financial support be for your effort? (Consider training or quality improvement budgets, foundation or private grants, government funding, etc.)

What barriers do you expect to encounter as you bring Touchpoints to your community?

• What can you do to mitigate these concerns?
• What help will you need?

Key Lessons

Reflecting on the experience of the national Touchpoints Network since 1996, we encourage you to consider three key lessons for achieving your desired outcomes for children and families. The first is the need for ongoing leadership support and commitment to the financial, human and administrative resources essential to the Touchpoints Program over time.

Second, your Touchpoints program must offer opportunities for ongoing learning, structured feedback, mentoring, and opportunities for individual providers to use the Touchpoints Approach in practice with families and children.

Third, to change the paradigm of how children and families are served over time, sites must work to reflect Touchpoints at every level from working directly with families and children to procedures and policy. Optimally, Touchpoints Teams include individuals with knowledge, skills and experience in planning, systems change, organizational development, and leadership as well as in training and facilitation.

Learn more about Becoming a Touchpoints Site

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