The Family Empowerment Program (FEP) - A Just Practice Alternative to "Mental Health" Delivery.

Posted on Sep 6, 2009 by Norbert A. Wetzel

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The Family Empowerment Program is a relational, context-centered model of counseling adolescents and their families in disadvantaged urban areas of New Jersey. Its core concepts and justice oriented practice can serve as a guide towards an alternative to the usual "mental health" service delivery.

About You

Organization: The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Inc. Visit website more ↓↑ hide ↑ hide

Section 1: About You

First Name

Norbert A.

Last Name

Wetzel

norbertwetzel@cfcsj.net

Website URL

http://www.cfcsj.org

Country

United States

Section 2: About Your Organization

Organization Name

The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Inc.

Organization Website

http://www.cfcsj.org

Organization Phone

609-921-3001 x 2

Organization Address

166 Bunn Drive, Suite # 105

Organization Country

United States

Is your organization a

Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization

Your idea

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Name Your Project

The Family Empowerment Program (FEP) - A Just Practice Alternative to "Mental Health" Delivery.

Country your work focuses on

United States

Describe Your Idea

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MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
The Family Empowerment Program is a relational, context-centered model of counseling adolescents and their families in disadvantaged urban areas of New Jersey. Its core concepts and justice oriented practice can serve as a guide towards an alternative to the usual "mental health" service delivery.

Innovation

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What makes your idea unique?

The Center’s “Just Practice” model of collaborative counseling is based on a paradigm that conceptualizes people’s life struggles in a way radically different from the objectivist and dualistic “classic realism” paradigm underlying the entire “mental health” services system. Rather than imitating the “medical model”, the co-founders of the Center chose for the “Family Empowerment Program” model as epistemological alternative a rigorously relationship-focused paradigm
With the relationship-focused and context-centered perspective the Center teams (2 professionals) working with urban youth and their families living in disadvantaged areas of New Jersey are able to view the young people within their intimate relational network (family and kinship network, neighbors, personal friends), their school context, their peer group, and their community.
The relational and contextual model emphasizes the teams’ and families’ curiosity, openness to learn from others, ability to respond personally and to act collaboratively. The ensuing mutual relationship between Center teams and families focuses on discovering strengths and resources to remove obstacles and to enhance lives. Working towards and with a thriving non-violent justice-oriented community is part of the Center teams’ tasks. “Just practice” seeks to heal relationships and strengthen communities through working toward justice.
The Center teams’ work with adolescents and families in 20 disadvantaged urban school settings flourishes at the margins of the so-called “mental health system”. The Center’s leadership is convinced that this model and its epistemological foundations constitute a viable alternative to the medical model with broad applications to people’s behavioral, emotional, or cognitive difficulties.

Do you have a patent for this idea?

Impact

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This Entry is about (Issues)

What impact have you had?

The Center teams (20 with the start of the 2009/2010 school year) consisting of a “Family Systems Specialist” (FSS) and a “Community Resources Specialist” (CRS) are charged to work with at least 60 students and their families throughout the school year. This means 1200 families with (conservatively) 4 members, i.e. 4800 people. In reality the numbers are much higher because the teams often work with more students and families, impact more members of extended families, accompany students and families throughout the middle and high school years who continue to be part of the “Family Empowerment Program”, but need fewer regular sessions, and "FEP families" often assist others in their neighborhoods.
In addition, the relationship-focused and context-centered paradigm is catching on with other professionals, i.e. the staff of the “School-based Youth Services Programs” in schools, teachers, school administrators, court personnel, social services workers, and, last not least, with people from the community who learn an alternative way of thinking and practicing in their efforts to build justice oriented communities, - an alternative to the accustomed “medical model” that finds faults with and seeks to repair “dysfunctional” individuals.
In most communities, the FEP teams, particularly the CRS, are actively engaged in current efforts
* to create alternatives to the spreading, in part gang-related, youth violence,
* to create just resolutions to growing tensions between ethnic groups in the community, and
* to support programs that can serve as resources for disadvantaged adolescents and families.

Problem

Problems:

1. Students in urban schools from low-income neighborhoods drop out of school at an alarming rate. Sometimes fewer than 1/3 of the 9th graders eventually graduate high school. Once out of school many of these young people, especially males, end up dealing drugs, getting involved in violence, or becoming parents before they can sustain a family. The percentage of incarcerated kids among high school drop-outs is high (1 in 4 black males).

2. Many students struggle with educational challenges that exceed the support capacities of special services. Other students exhibit patterns of unacceptable behaviors (violence, disrespect, social aggression, bullying, sexual acting out) or appear anxious, depressed, or confused to a degree that makes learning impossible.

3. Even students that seem well adjusted experience family issues, such as domestic violence, chronic illness, ongoing alcohol or drug abuse, personal trauma, hunger, or homelessness, that hinder their development and their educational progress.

Actions

Actions:

The Center’s “Family Empowerment Program” teams meet with students who are referred or show up at the team’s school offices for an initial assessment that includes inquiries about their school experience, their family composition, their peer world, and their neighborhood community. The teams form an initial hypothesis and then pursue all available support possible from professionals, other adults and/or peers within the various contexts the student is connected with. Student, family, and supporting peers and adults form the unit for which the FEP teams are the consultants.
The teams’ work is focused on the relational dynamics between all concerned and centered on the students’ main contexts. The FEP model is geared toward bringing out the strengths and assets of the relational network. The teams’ multiple connections to the neighborhoods and communities of the schools are essential for the counseling to succeed.

Results

Our Pre-and Post-Questionnaires have shown that 89 % of students who are involved with the "Family Empowerment Program" either continue in school or graduate high school - a very high number.
This fall we started a new FEP team at two elementary schools because of the trust of the local Board of Education and its representatives.

Case vignettes and reports from the teams also show that a high number of students who faced serious convictions for drug offenses, violence, robbery, gang activities etc. received either shorter sentences or were released on probation and ordered by the courts to receive counseling from the FEP teams. Several Community Resource Specialists became experts in bringing prosecuting and defending attorneys together to jointly make sentencing suggestions to the court.
Currently, several teams are working to propose and practice ideas to create "alternatives to violence" for younger gang members and for girls.

What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.

The Center's "Family Empowerment Program" is already successful as a model to work with adolescents and their families in a school context - at the margins of the so-called "mental health system" and, except where required by the school authorities, without psychiatric interventions or medication.
What the Center faculty would need to solidify this success:

1. year: State of the art research about the outcome of the teams' work and about what specifically is working and making a difference (and what may be unimportant or counter productive);

2. year: Expand the current training of new and existing FEP teams and summarize the current work in a handbook that could broaden the teams' understanding of the epistemological foundations and guide them in their work.

3. The Center would like to publish its work and contribute to a conference about "Alternatives to the Mental Health Services System".

All these points require greater financial resources than the Center has now.

What would prevent your project from being a success?

1. If the funding from the State of New Jersey, Department of Children and Families, Division of Prevention and Community Partnerships would cease, it would be very difficult for the Center to find alternative resources and to continue the FEP work.
2. If the current Center faculty/supervisors (a group of highly trained and experienced family therapists) would be unable to continue it would be very difficult to replace them (They represent great cultural and other diversity!).
3. If the Center would be forced to operate as a traditional "mental health clinic" focused on individual adolescents, diagnosis, individual therapy and medication, the FEP model could not continue.

How many people will your project serve annually?

1001‐10,000

What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?

$1000 - 4000

Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?

Yes

Sustainability

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What stage is your project in?

Operating for more than 5 years

In what country?

United States

Is your initiative connected to an established organization?

Yes

If yes, provide organization name.

The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, USA

How long has this organization been operating?

More than 5 years

Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?

Yes

Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?

Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?

Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?

Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.

To clarify:
The Center FEP teams have locally informal connections to businesses and local government institutions. And the Center leadership maintains informal collegial contacts with professionals at the NJ State Government level and local universities, especially Rutgers University.

What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?

1. Research: Outcome Research - Program Evaluation - Research into how the FEP model assists successfully students and families to grow, learn, and graduate.
2. Professional dialogue at conferences and through publications should increase substantially.
3. Expansion of the model to Pennsylvania and New York (contacts exist already)

The Story

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What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?

There are multiple strands and roots for the justice oriented alternative practice of the "Family Empowerment Program" model: some personal, some relational, some professional.
A series of "defining moments" came from my supervising psychology graduate students of color at a free health clinic in Trenton, NJ. They worked with homeless and unemployed women, men, and families as counselors. We realized that there are no generally accessible counseling services for people who are "outside" the mostly middle class counseling contexts and have no health insurance.

Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.

One of the co-founders (Hinda Winawer) brought back from a visit to Nicaragua the experience of comprehensive local clinics where people could get counseling, health treatment, legal advice, general support (including active support groups)to implement changes needed to lead more fulfilling lives.

How did you first hear about Changemakers?

Newsletter from Changemakers

If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company

	136 weeks agoNorbert A. Wetzel updated this Competition Entry.
	141 weeks agoNorbert A. Wetzel updated this Competition Entry.
	141 weeks agoNorbert A. Wetzel updated this Competition Entry.
	141 weeks agoNorbert A. Wetzel submitted this idea.

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The Family Empowerment Program (FEP) - A Just Practice Alternative to "Mental Health" Delivery.

About You

Section 1: About You

Section 2: About Your Organization

Your idea

Innovation

Impact

Sustainability

The Story