Our Mission is to build stronger families in Arizona
The mission of Amazing Grace Arizona Families is to help keep Arizona families safe, healthy and happy. We are contracted with Arizona’s Department of Child Safety and serve families through the Family Connections Program and Nurturing Parenting Program.
Families may be referred to AGAF through Arizona’s Department of Child Safety in Maricopa, Pima, Yuma, Pinal, Gila, and Yavapai county. Families with an open DCS case can speak with their DCS Specialist about interest in either program.
Available Services
Amazing Grace Arizona Families offers support through our simple, 3 step process:
Assessment: A member of our caring team will do an in-home family assessment to identify the family’s basic needs, concerns and determine what resources and training are needed, both as a whole family and as individuals.
Resources: We connect families with available resources and services that will set them up for success. These may include things such resources for as food, clothing, transportation, and health care assistance.
Training: We offer each family member beneficial training and we can refer families to professional counseling services they may require. Our staff uses the evidence based parenting curriculum, Nurturing Parenting Program, which targets all families at risk for abuse and neglect with children birth to 18 years. We use this program to teach positive nurturing behavior skills as an alternative to abusive and neglecting parenting and child-rearing practices. One of the long term goals is to prevent recidivism in families who are receiving Social Services.
Meet the Team
Our founder has over 20 years of experience in human services for non-profit agencies and faith based organizations in Arizona and California. She has supervised developmentally disabled adults and children and temporary shelters for children removed by DCS. She has also managed community outreach ministries in churches such as Prison Ministry, Homeless Ministry, Nursing Home Ministry, Hispanic Ministry, and Bus Ministry.
She has ten years of experience working as a Parent Aide, Parent Aide Supervisor, Parent Aide Regional Manager, Parent Aide Project Manager, Supervised Visit Only Supervisor, and Youth in Transition Facilitator and has also worked in Family Preservation and Reunification. While working in the Parent Aide Program, she had one of the largest teams with a proven track record for the highest retention rate of staff and the largest caseload. Amazing Grace’s team has a wide variety of diverse experience in Social Work. Each staff member has a passion to help families succeed.
Several of our staff has ADCS Core PA and Case Aide (CA) training with an additional 18+ hours of ongoing training, CPR and First Aid certifications, clear Central Registry Background Checks, and level one fingerprint clearance cards. Our team is trained in child development issues; how to handle trauma-related, vulnerable, or medically fragile individuals; and how to draw boundaries and intervene where necessary to de-escalate adverse confrontation. Additionally, we’ve partnered with SAFE KIDS to provide team members, and families with extensive car seat training. We pride ourselves on running a quality program with talented people, experience an atypical low turnover rate, and are only 1 of 9 agencies in Arizona successfully offering the revolutionary BRF Program which s an Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) contracted program for families who have been involved with ADCS.
Work With Us
Having began in 2012, our group is a growing team of approximately 30 staff.
We believe that in order to be good at what we do, we have to build a caring and reliable work family. We support and value each other with established caseload parameters that best serve families and reduce burnout of our staff to achieve timely goals.
Qualities we’re looking for in new-hires include experience in Social Work, preferably in BRF, SVO, Parent Aide, Family Preservation, Youth in Transition, Family Reunification Programs, success in engaging families in participation. relationship skills, and a great passion for serving the community. Please contact us if you are interested in being part of our team.