Family Resilience Program

Program Overview
CorStone’s new Family Resilience Program builds emotional resiliency in at-risk parents of young children. Resilience helps parents function competently, powerfully and peacefully under stress. It allows them make healthful choices, to manage and recover from setback, trauma, or adversity, and solve problems.

CorStone’s program seeks to reduce the likelihood of child abuse, domestic violence, parental depression, anxiety, and isolation. The program addresses barriers to effective parenting and healthy communication in the family by increasing parental coping skills and decreasing stress.

Measurable results. Remarkable impact.
Launched in San Rafael and Marin City, CA, this unique program is already delivering significant results. Fresh data indicates that CorStone’s unique approach is having a measurable and dramatic impact on improving participants’ outlook, happiness, self-image and family communication skills.

  • Surveys of 32 mothers of young children in the immigrant-rich, low-income Canal neighborhood of San Rafael, California, showed that before participating in CorStone’s Family Resilience Program, which began in April 2009, only 6% said they were “very optimistic” about their future. After completing the 8-week program, almost 10 times as many—58%—reported being “very optimistic.”
  • Before the deployment of CorStone’s program, only 41% described themselves as generally happy. 8 weeks later, 81% described themselves as generally happy.
  • When asked about their self-image at the start of the program, a scant 28% said they were happy or very happy with themselves. Within two months, fully 84% said they had become happy or very happy with themselves.

Other results were also very positive and equally impressive as exemplified by a participating mother who reflected, “I can finally parent my children positively and I feel I have all the tools I need”.

  • During the program’s eight weeks, the number of participants who felt “cut off from others” in their daily lives dropped from 16% to 4%. Those who reported feeling “connected” to their children most or all of the time increased from 38% to 54%. And, most dramatically, those who said they communicated positively with their spouse jumped from 6% to 62%.

Program Details
As a timely, well-defined program that addresses community-at-risk needs, CorStone’s Family Resilience Program is delivered by trained in-community facilitators, who in turn are supervised by CorStone staff. The program serves parents and caregivers from diverse cultures and socio-economic groups raising children from birth to five years of age.

The program consists of 1-1/2 hour weekly sessions for 8 weeks, pairing instructional classes with peer support using the ‘Attitudinal Healing’ model of facilitation developed at CorStone over the past 35 years. In these interactive sessions, families can learn and practice their new skills in a highly supportive setting.  Parenting curriculum for expectant parents and parents of young children is included in each session, providing easy-to-understand instruction on topics such as:

  • Early childhood development (biological bases of behavior, attachment and nurturing, neurological functioning, emotional resilience)
  • Emotional regulation and anger management
  • Mindfulness training and coping with stress
  • Social skills, non-violent communication, conflict resolution, and crisis management
  • Techniques for solving problems, making healthy decisions, and setting positive goals

The Family Resilience Program promotes (1) receptivity to new information, ideas and theories; (2) tolerance for ambiguity and differing viewpoints; (3) insight, compassion, and empathy, and (4) the ability to make positive choices that strengthen future decision-making and increase flexibility in stressful situations. As resilience increases, attachments grow. As those attachments deepen, so does healthy social and emotional development.  Facilitated peer support groups for parents provide an important avenue for participants to practice healthy ways of processing the curriculum and communicating the emotions of parenting and marriage. 

CorStone’s Family Resilience Program uses a delivery model that is efficient, low-cost, and available to families regardless of their ability to pay. The San Rafael program is conducted entirely in Spanish. The program’s reach and positive effects are extended when interested parents who have completed the program receive further training—preparing them to become qualified facilitators at future sessions for incoming parents.

Program Delivery
Currently, this program is being delivered in San Rafael and Marin City, CA. Contact CorStone for location details.

CorStone seeks partnerships with additional neighborhood and community organizations as we reach out with new low cost/high impact programs and possibilities to better our world – one that chooses love over fear, compassion over indifference, and forgiveness over blame in the face of crisis.

For more information, please contact Steve Leventhal at 415.331.6161, stevel@corstone.org.

 

Research