Family Partners and Youth Advocates help treatment teams provide services through a lens that is strength-based, outcome-driven, team-based, persistent, individualized, culturally competent, collaborative, community-based, inclusive of natural supports, and upholds family voice and choice.

Family Partners are staff members who have personal experience in the child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice systems as a consumer and/or as a parent/caregiver. Youth Advocates are young adults also employed by Stanford Sierra Youth & Families who have personal experience within the child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, or education systems. Family Partners and Youth Advocates have four key functions within the agency:

• To make families equal partners — if not leaders — in the development and implementation of their service plans;
• To represent the needs and perspectives of families to internal and external stakeholders and decision makers within the system of care;
• To ensure families have access to a comprehensive array of prevention and support services that meet their individual needs; and
• To ensure services are family-centered, easily accessible, respectful of cultural, ethnic, and other community characteristics, and stigma-free.