The FOCUS Family Resilience Program: An Innovative Family Intervention for Trauma and Loss

• Author: William R. Saltzman
• Published date: 01 December 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12250
• Date: 01 December 2016

The FOCUS Family Resilience Program: An

Innovative Family Intervention for Trauma and Loss

WILLIAM R. SALTZMAN*

,†

This article describes the core principles and components of the FOCUS Program, a brief

intervention for families contending with single or multiple trauma or loss events. It has

been administered nationally to thousands of military family members since 2008 and has

been implemented in a wide range of civilian community, medical, cli nical, and school set-

tings. Developed by a team from the UCLA and Harvard Medical Schools, the FOCUS Pro-

gram provides a structured approach for joining with traditional and nontraditional

families, crafting shared goals, and then working with parents, children, and the entire

family to build communication, make meaning out of traumatic experiences, and practice

specific skills that support family resilience. Through a narrative sharing process, each

family member tells his or her story and constructs a timeline that graphically captures the

experience and provides a platform for family discussions on points of convergence and

divergence. This narrative sharing process is first done with the parents and then the chil-

dren and then the family as a whole. The aim is to build perspective-taking skills and

mutual understanding, to reduce distortions and misattributions, and to bridge estrange-

ment between family members. Previous studies have confirmed that families participating

in this brief program report reductions in distress and symptomatic behaviors for both par-

ents and children and increases in child pro-social behaviors and family resilient pro-

cesses.

Keywords: Family Resilience; Family Therapy; Trauma; Loss; Narrative; Medical

Trauma

Fam Proc 55:647–659, 2016

INTRODUCTION

Converging developments in public policy and research are influencing standards of

clinical and community-based practice to include family-centered, strength-based pre-

ventive services. A growing literature confirms the effectiveness of manualized family-cen-

tered preventive interventions for a wide spectrum of stressful, traumatic, and loss

experiences (Rozensky, Celano, & Kaslow, 2013; Lucksted, McFarlane, Downing, Dixon,

& Adams, 2012; Weisz & Kazdin, 2010; NRCIOM, 2009a). This includes parental depres-

sion (Beardslee, Wright, Gladstone, & Forbes, 2007), bereavement (Sandler et al., 2003),

substance use (Lochman & Steenhoven, 2002), parent and child medical illness

(Rotheram-Borus, Lee, Lin & Lester, 2004), natural disasters (Gewirtz, Forgatch, & Wiel-

ing, 2008), parental divorce (Wolchik et al., 2002), and military deployment and associated

parental physical and psychological injury (Lester et al., 2016; Cozza, 2015; Institute of

*UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.

†

Advanced Studies in Education & Counseling, California State University, Long Beach, CA.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William R. Saltzman, PhD, 2179 Kin-

neloa Canyon Rd., Pasadena, CA 91107. E-mail: wsaltzman@sbcglobal.net.

647

Family Process, Vol. 55, No. 4, 2016 ©2016 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12250