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I like coming here on Tuesday nights so
we can get together and learn about
what we should do and
we get dessert and
sometimes we get
pizza
That's my favourite parts.
I'm currently involved with the Strengthening Parents Program
It's a program that started down
in Utah in the 1980's
and was then adopted by the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health
in Ontario.
And they underwent some
pretty intense evaluation
and made some changes to the program to make it more Canadianized
and recently
we had a consultant with the Department of Health and Community Services
who recommended to all of the addictions prevention consultants that we implement
this program in each of the regions
so for us this is the first time that we've been offering Strengthening Families
in this part of the region
and we're about halfway through. It's a fourteen week program
and there are plans to have the program run in Clarenville area starting
later in the month.
The overall goal the Strengthening Families Pogram is to strengthen
parent/child bonds
Hi, I guess what i liked about the Strengthening Family Program
is the fact that it gives us a chance to do something together
and we learn how to
be a better family environment
and hopefully the kids are learning something too
It's fourteen weeks, three hours a night, one night a week
Family who participates
it's free of charge.
Transportation is included, meals are included.
The target age group are ages seven to eleven
and if there's any children younger than seven they can also attend and we
provide
childcare.
So when the families come, we have a family meal for the first hour
and then during the second hour at the parents will meet in the parent group and
the children will do their sessions in the
children's group.
The response to this program has been tremendous. I have weekly contact with
the families so i'll call them on a Monday to kind of check in to see what they need
to help get them here for Tuesday night
and overwhelmingly
positive response from families.
The partnerships that we've
created and that we've built on has been wonderful
The Splash Centre applied The Communities Against Violence and received
funding to run this program.
We have facilitators from the Splash Centre
we have partners from mental health, we have two facilitators from Child Youth
and Family Services and we have a child management specialist as part of our team.
The Strengthening Families Program to me is
a very very enjoyable program. I recommend it to anybody.
Some of the subjects we learn is
kids have their own room and parents go in their room
The kids learn almost the same thing but in children form of what the parents are
learning.
The one that we did last week was on kids and drugs and I found it
very very interesting.
It gives the parents an idea of what to be looking for and ideas of
how they know if the child is
easy to adapt to the drugs and some examples of how they will get drugs
and that.
There's also youth
who are members of the Splash Centre Program
who help set up and provide child care and help out with the children's groups and those
kinds of things.
The families come in together and spend time with each other.
We help with the children's group and I'm with the children's group so we help children
by
talking about awareness like drugs,
peer pressure and
all stuff like, you know.
Each week it's structured
and it's recommended that we follow each session as it's laid out
so
so say for tonight
the work will be around substance use
drugs, the different types of drugs that are available and their impact.