Air Force: The mission of the U.S. Air Force Family Advocacy Program is to build healthy communities through implementing programs designed for the prevention and treatment of child and spouse abuse.
The Family Advocacy Program seeks to:
- Provide primary prevention services to all Air Force personnel.
- Provide secondary prevention services to populations at risk for family violence.
- Support family members with special medical or educational needs.
- Identify and treat incidents of child and spouse maltreatment.
- Prevent child and spouse abuse.
The unifying theme under which AF Family Advocacy operates is Building Healthy Families and Communities. It is within this spirit of treatment, intervention, prevention, education, and skill building that the Family Advocacy Program staff work to create resilient military personnel and families.
Services provided by Family Advocacy Program at Bolling AFB include:
- Consultation to Commanders and First Sergeants
- Consultation to medical personnel
- Family Advocacy Strength-based Therapy Services
- Family Maltreatment Assessment and Treatment
- Family Member Relocation Clearances
- Family Violence Prevention Education and Training
- Information & referral services
- Prevention Services
- Special Needs Identification & Assignment Coordination
Specific programs include:
- Anger Management: Provides adults or teens with the capability of recognizing anger signs and with effective, systematic ways to deal with the anger.
- Boys Town Common Sense Parenting: Educates parents about children and teach positive methods of parenting children. Common Sense Parenting includes role-playing with situations that are common in families. Programs provide opportunity for discussion and mutual support among participants.
- Child Maltreatment - Prevention, Detection and Reporting: This program involves lecture and discussion about signs and symptoms of child maltreatment, forms of abuse, reporting procedures and requirements, and the role of Family Advocacy in maltreatment prevention.
- Conflict Management: Designed to train adults in the work place, appropriate empowering ways of resolving conflict.
- Stress Management: Provides adults or teens with the capability of recognizing signs of stress with effective, systematic ways to deal with the stress at work and/or home.
- Good Touch Bad Touch: Designed to teach children about the different kinds of contact between people as well as skills children can use to protect them from the possibility of being abused.
- Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus: This seminar, through the use a multimedia CD-ROM, provides information on how men and women communicate in different ways, and explores the dynamics of communication of couples in common situations.
- New Parent Support Program: A home-based program to provide military families with skills needed for a happy and healthy child-rearing experience. The NPSP nurse sees the families (to include single active duty mothers) primarily in their homes. Any family expecting a child or adopting a child or with a child under three years of age is eligible. The NPSP team (R.N., clinical social worker and social service specialist) provides services based on family needs.
- Positive Guidance: Provides positive discipline guidelines and options to do with children when misbehavior occurs. It also defines discipline, discusses reasons children misbehave and the role of modeling self-control and positive behavior.
- Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP): This 8-hour workshop teaches communication improvement, conflict management and resolution, building a strong relationship, and identification of problem areas in the relationship.
- Respite Care: Helps those families registered in the Special Needs Identification and Assignment Coordination Process (SNIAC) (see below) who cannot afford respite care by funding a few hours of child/elder care each week or month.
- Special Needs Identification and Assignment Coordination Process (SNIAC): Supports personnel assignments. When families relocate, the process is critical to determine the availability of services for spouses and children with special needs. The process links the services of the Military Personnel Flights, the Medical Treatment Facilities, and the Airmen & Family Readiness Centers.
- Educational and Developmental Intervention Service: This is a congressionally mandated program that provides specialty services to children with special needs, ages birth to 21.
- Time Management: This class offers a "one-shot" approach to improved time management. It is based on the needs of the participants and looks at some of the basic causes of poor time management.
Marines: Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) Marine and Family Services (MFS) provides education and counseling services and workshops to individuals and families seeking self- improvement. We also work together with other community services in an effort to strengthen Marine families and provide appropriate referral services when needed.
One component of MCCS MFS is the Counseling Services Program. The program has highly-qualified, licensed clinical staff, who are trained in family violence and are available to provide counseling services at your request. Counselors are available to respond quickly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help individuals and families who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Family Advocacy professionals are also available to assist commanders and other leaders with various trainings, briefings, and workshops to aid in the early detection of stressors so they can be resolved before they become personal or family problems.
For more information, please call 703-614-7200
DSN 224-7200
Services
Prevention and Education Services
Parenting classes and groups
Suicide Prevention
New Parent Support Program
Anger and Stress Management
Couples and Relationship Programs
Please contact your MCCS MFS Counseling Center for a detailed list and calendar of ongoing classes and programs.
Intervention
Information & Referrals
Command Consultation
Intakes and Screenings
Clinical Assessments
Victim Advocacy
24 HR Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services
Transitional Compensation for Abused Family Members Program
Treatment
Domestic Violence Support Groups
Individual, couple, and family counseling
Our clinical counselors are licensed and trained to work with individuals and families with a variety of emotional problems. Some examples would be helping individuals and families cope with depression, resolving issues in marriage, developing conflict resolution skills, and discussing parenting issues. Counseling service counselors also provide briefs for commands and provide a variety of prevention and intervention tools for service members and their families.
Navy: The Family Advocacy Program counselor provides assessment, crisis intervention, and treatment for reported incidents of family maltreatment, to include spouse/child abuse and neglect. The assessment process follows a case from the initial report of abuse, through the case presentation, to the Case Review Subcommittee.
Treatment includes individual, family and group counseling, both voluntary and mandated, to indentified Family Advocacy clients.
Case Managers assess the needs of the client/family and arrange, coordinate, monitor, evaluate, and advocate for multiple services to meet the specific client's complex needs.
The Family Advocacy Program prevention and education specialist assesses the needs of the command and provides education awareness of family maltreatment to the command and the military community.
The New Parent Support Team helps new parents cope with the demands of military life, to increase parenting skills and knowledge of raising children.
No specific information was provided by the Army for this section.