PRINCIPLES:

• Decisions must be based on a family's preferences, choices, and values and not on administrative expediencies;
  
• Families must be recognized as the primary resource and decision-makers for their child;
  
• Families must have access to a flexible, affordable, individualized array of supports, services and material items that provide "whatever it takes" to maintain themselves as a family;
  
• The family's strengths, including the social networks and informal supports already available to and within the family, should be the foundation upon which new supports are designed or provided. Furthermore, if (but only if) the family wishes it, family support services should help to expand and strengthen the informal resources available to the family;
  
• Support services must be culturally and geographically sensitive and able to meet the diverse needs of families;
  
• Family supports must be affordable, well-coordinated, accessible, and available to all families who need them, when and how the need them;