The F.E.A.S.T Program
Crisis within the family has and continues to destroy or negatively impact entire families. This results in our Social System being over burden with counseling, criminals, and the separation of family members. Typically, counseling is a result which is provided too late in the game and only given to a small numbers of candidates. Cost factors are very high and the current economy can't bear it.
Counseling candidates frequently give moderate resistance. Some do not understand how or why certain things have occurred in their lives and how to start to make positive changes. Therefore, counseling can take longer, obviously cost is higher and there is increased difficulty in the candidate achieving change.
The Family Education and Safety Training Program is a program of prevention and exposure. Life's problems such as violence, anger, substance abuse, poor parenting skills, poor communication, and household finances, are things that for some candidates can be better prevented through education. Instead of waiting to address these issues to the masses, classes can be provided to give many critical life-enhancing comments before the candidate is in crisis. This can reduce or eliminate the "I didn't know" phrase from many circumstances.
The F.E.A.S.T. Program is considered a program for the entire family. The program's purpose is to prevent crisis within the home. Numerous issues are involved in the demise of the family structure as families are saddled with changes and challenges in virtually every aspect of their lives. Based on current counseling research, society now recognizes that if a member of the family is a substance abuser, mentally or physically abusive, or just simply violent, there is a profound impact on other family members. The affects can be displayed in a variety of ways. The goal is for families to understand how to better handle those situations when and if they occur.
The idea behind the F.E.A.S.T. Program is that preventative presentations can have a positive impact on families, simply because collectively a family seldom can have an opportunity to learn together. Counseling is education about a specific or variety of things, but it usually takes place after the problem becomes crisis. Family education and safety training is teaching the competent child along with the responsible adult. Together kids and parents, as a family, can listen, question, and learn what to expect as well as how to prevent a crisis before it occurs.
The program is designed to help families be prepared for some common occurrences within the household. Prevention knowledge enables members to use the information to resist unacceptable responses that can end with negative results. When the proper response is applied to potentially crisis situations, the event can be lessoned and resources can be implemented. This approach is best utilized, because prevention can have a positive effect on families, this is likely to reduce encounters with law enforcement resulting in less legal cases and the reduction of social service case loads.
Benefits of the program can be observed when family members resort to the training experience when they encounter circumstances that conceivably can occur within a household. There can be a significantly different outcome when the entire family is capable of encouraging a more positive reaction.