The Strong Families Program

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STRONG FAMILIES consists of seven interactive, video-based, FREE sessions conducted over consecutive weeks.  The program enhances parents’ general child management skills, parent-child affective relationships, and family communication.  Based on a developmental model, SFP assumes that increasing the family’s protective processes while decreasing its potential risk factors can alter a child’s future, so that problem behaviors can be reduced or avoided.  In addition, the program seeks to delay the onset of adolescent alcohol and substance use by improving family practices.

The STRONG FAMILIES program is designed to:

• Enhance parenting skills, empathy, and promote effective parenting styles.
• Build decision-making and life skills in youth, including stress management, conflict resolution, peer pressure resistance, and empathy.
• Strengthen family bonds and promote positive communication and the ability to jointly solve problems.

 Protective Factors

• Youth and family management practices, including monitoring, age-appropriate parental expectations, and consistent discipline
• Effective and empathetic parent-child communication
• Promotion of healthy beliefs and clear standards
• Family bonding and supportive family involvement
• Goal setting and positive future orientation
• Positive parent-child affect
• Emotional management
• Pro-social family values
• Peer pressure refusal skills

Risk Factors

• Child and family management practices, including harsh, inappropriate, or inconsistent discipline, indulgence, poor parental monitoring, demanding/rejecting behavior, and poor communication of rules
• Youth aggressive or withdrawn behavior
• Favorable attitudes toward problem behaviors and substance use
• Friends who engage in problem behaviors-Negative peer influences
• Poor social and stress management skills
• Family conflict
• Early initiation of problem behaviors
• Early and persistent antisocial behavior
• Poor school performance