Description of Creating Lasting Family Connections Program

Description of Creating Lasting Family Connections Program

By Sarah Barton, Sagamore Institute Faith in Communities, 2004

The Creating Lasting Family Connections (CLFC) program was created by the Council on Prevention and Education: Substances (or COPES, Inc.), a private nonprofit organization with the goal of designing and implementing effective programs promoting the healthy development of youth and to enrich family life.

COPES believes that an effective prevention program needs to involve parents and other caring adults in larger community.  The CLFC model, which is based upon COPES’s successful demonstration program, works to increase protective factors and to delay the onset and reduce the frequency of alcohol and other drug use among at-risk 12 to 14 year olds. Three domains are targeted to increase protective or resiliency factors:  community, family, individual youth.  Connectedness in each of these domains is a critical protective factor.

CLFC has several main program components:

Community mobilization.  CLFC provides a five-part strategy to mobilize the community.  Stage one involves selecting and recruiting sponsoring community organizations.  A community advocate team is recruited, committed, and trained during stage two.  In stage three, families are recruited to participate in the program.  Stage four addresses family retention and stage five includes measures to enhance community capacity.

School mobilization.  If a school community plays a major part in the implementation of CLFC, efforts will be made to mobilize the school to provide activities aimed at empowering youth, increase participation in project activities, and improve the school climate.

Parent and youth training.  CLFC has three training components for parents:  Developing Positive Parental Influences, Raising Resilient Youth and “Getting Real” communications training.  For youth, there are three separate trainings focusing on similar issues. In addition, the CLFC program includes a “Getting Real:  Parent and Youth Combined Communications” Training. 

Developing Positive Parental Influences is an interactive training for parents and other adults interested in having a positive influence on youth that provides them with greater awareness of facts and feelings about drugs, intervention, referrals, and treatment.  Raising Resilient Youth Training enhances parents’ skills to develop and implement expectations and consequences for their children, including in the area of alcohol and other drug use.

Developing a Positive Response training for youth helps them to make appropriate decisions about alcohol and other drug use.  Developing Independence and Responsibility helps youth to recognize the responsibilities they may have as they get older and develop the skills necessary to succeed.

Both parents and youth learn to understand communications styles, to identify their own styles of communicating and to establish new ways of communicating with self-awareness and mutual respect in the Getting Real Communications Training.  Parents and youth receive separate Getting Real trainings, but also participate in a combined Getting Real training that gives parents and youth the opportunity to put the skills they have learned into practice.

Early intervention and follow-up activities.  A key component of CLFC is to provide an ongoing support system for the families involved in the program, including problem assessment and the development of a treatment and/or referral plan.  Case managers also should follow up with the families by making bimonthly telephone consultations and/or home visits so that referrals for additional support services can be made if needed.

Additional information about CFLC is available in Building Healthy Individuals, Families, and Communities:  Creating Lasting Connections, by Ted. N. Strader, David A. Collins, and Tim D. Noe, Klumer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2000).