Family Initiatives for Custodial Parents:
Family Options Program

The majority of adults recovering from mental illness are parents. Like all parents, parents with mental illness report that parenting is a central part of their identity, and that they want to be the best parents they can be. Studies also indicate that parenting can provide powerful motivation for recovery and contribute to positive outcomes.

Despite the high prevalence of parenthood among adults recovering from mental illness, there are very few programs which explicitly support parenting and family-centered goals.

Family Options is an innovative, empirically-driven program for parents recovering from mental illness and their children, and represents a longstanding partnership between Employment Options and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The Family Options program reflects an integration of the strengths-based, recovery and empowerment-oriented principles and evidence-based practices, of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and wraparound in children’s systems of care. The Program has a fundamental commitment to understanding and responding to recovery as a family experience, in which parents and all family members are supported to participate as fully and as meaningfully as possible in their personal and community lives.

The Program

• Trusting, empowerment-focused, parent-family coach relationship
• Parent education and skills building
• Need-driven, collaborative team goal planning
• 24-hour warm lines
• Flexible funding
• Parent support group
• Parent peer support

The Families

Currently we serve 25 families, with 48 children.

Parents:

• 91% mothers
• 48% single parent
• Average number of children per family: 2
• Average age: 37 years
• Race: Caucasian 74%, African American 8%, Hispanic 15%, Asian 3%, )
• Educational level ( 24% did not complete HS, 38% GED or HS graduation, 21% beyond HS, 6% unknown)
• Income: 75% families at or below poverty level
• Experience of custody loss: 34%

Children

• Age range: birth to 18 years of age
• Average age: 9 years old
• Concerns:
  
  • 58% Special Education
    
  • 34% Mental health diagnosis
    
  • 4% Medical condition ( Severe and persistent)

Funding

Family Options was made possible due to the three-year funding received from AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LLP. AstraZeneca played a conscious role in raising awareness for this program and has developed an evidence-based documentary and discussion guide. These tools continue to be used to educate legislators, ally organizations and other key stakeholders about the program. Family Options continues to creatively seek public and private funding to continue to provide care to families.

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