NCJ Number
186339
Date Published
2000
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the Families and Schools Together (FAST) program designed to reduce cumulative risks to children and enhance protective factors in families.
Abstract
The FAST program targets the underlying causes of being at risk of educational failure, substance abuse, violence, and delinquency. The program's strategy is to reduce the causal factors related to those problems by starting with young children and adopting a family-based model. It develops a support network for the family and empowers parents to be the primary prevention agent for their own children. FAST provides a structured, fun-filled, interactive multi-family group program run in the child's primary school to implement goals of prevention and family strengthening. The program makes a predictable 20 percent positive difference in overall family functioning and in children's individual behaviors, both at home and at school, in 8 weeks. Moreover, it has worked successfully with stressed, depressed, impoverished, isolated, and hard-to-reach, at-risk families. FAST has been implemented in 34 American cities, more than 400 schools, three Indian Nations, and five countries. Note, figures, bibliography