Family Mental Health Services
Keeping Families Strong Program
The Keeping Families Strong Program plays the key role of intervening with families with risk factors who are identified by Appleseed’s partner agencies to be at risk for having their children removed from the home due to behavioral and/or mental health concerns or who are experiencing severe reactions to traumas and abuse. Families and children who experience trauma often display a high level of risk factors. These families often want concrete tools to move beyond their situation for the family to recover from severe reactions to traumas and abuse. This program uses the Integrative Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) and the Family Systems Trauma (FST) models to effectively treat trauma while involving the entire family and their natural support systems.
Improving mental health services for families and their children is crucial to the overall health of our community. The I-FAST model is an evidence-based supported family treatment model and follows The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Practice Parameter for the Assessment of the Family. Treatment focuses on specific symptoms and problems that parents identify as their main concerns. This model utilizes both the agency and clients' strengths and resources and is effective in bringing positive outcomes in families that have children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral problems. -I-FAST
The FST technique is a component of the evidence-based model, Parenting Love & Limits® (PLL) System of Care. According to the PLL logic model, the goal of the FST technique is to use structural and strategic family therapy directives to address the family or individual’s unhealed wounds in the here-and-now from a family systems perspective. Through these techniques, benefits include a reduction in risk factors and increase in protective factors.-FST
The Keeping Families Strong program is funded in part by Ashland County United Way.
