The Family Assistance and Parent Support Program
Family Support Persons
Family Support Persons are persons in the community who play an important part under the Family Assistance and Parent Support Program by providing personal support to families experiencing minor difficulties relating to their separation or divorce. Family Support Persons are often friends or relatives of the family experiencing difficulty and who wish to assist in this one family's case. Unlike Family Coordinators who involve themselves with several different families, Family Support Persons usually only involve themselves in the one family's case and usually having contact with only one of the sides in the dispute. Family Support Persons should possess common sense, family values and who sincerely believe in helping their friends and neighbours get through their difficulties.
Who do Family Support Persons work with?
Family support persons work with the other persons in the family's support team as part of the community team of professionals and non-professionals who assist the family. Family Support Persons work most closely with Family Coordinators. The purpose of the community effort is to assist families in a manner that will minimize involvement of the police services, the costly legal and adversarial court system. This approach is highly beneficial to the best interests of the children and works on the old well-known principle of “it take a village to raise a child.”
Family Support Persons are not professionals but non-professional people from the community with a sincere desire to help families using a family friendly and community approach. Teachers, day care workers and even neighbours make exceptionally good support persons, as they often are persons already known by the children involved and to whom the children can speak to openly and honestly.
How does a person become a family support person
Generally, each party in a family dispute will submit the names of those willing to support the family as a member of their personal support person. For those new to a community without a network of friends, parties may select persons from a list of people in the community. From that list support persons will be selected. Usually the number of support persons is limited to two, one man and one woman. Often another couple in the community make a good Family Support Team. Family Support Persons generally provide assistance to one family at a time.
Does a family support person have to take any training?
Once family support persons have been chosen by the parties involved, they participate in a very informal meeting, often at their home with the family coordinator, where they will be provided information intended to educate them about family conflict, its causes and solutions and its affect on children and their families. The information they receive can be of great benefit in almost any situation involving family conflict. They are also given information about how the Family Assistance and Parents Support Program is designed to provide assistance to the family and what their role as a support person involves.
The experience that a person gets from helping a family as a Family Support Person can be of benefit to members of their own families such as children or grandchildren, should other members of their family experience problems at some time in the future.
Some of the things that a Family Support Person will do
There are a number of important things that Family Support Persons will do to help parties work out solutions to some of the problems they face and give them friendly non-legal advice.
Some examples of the type of help that a family support persons can provide:
Help the parents and the Family Coordinator work out simple agreements on issues involving the children, such as parenting arrangements or school issues.
Help parents make changes in schedules during special events and holidays, where such events may not have been covered in any existing court agreements.
Help parents and their family members address their concerns in a friendly, non-adversarial and cost effective manner.
Acting as a friendly neutral party with whom the children feel comfortable to discuss their problems, wishes and preferences,
Help to facilitate phone conversations between parents and children and between parents.
Facilitate communication between parents during times when parents may be experiencing problems.
Help to calm parties should they become hostile or angry
To encourage the party they are assisting to be reasonable and to act in the best interests of the children.
The Benefits of a Family Support Person
The help provided by a family support person can have extensive benefits not only for the children and families involved, but for the community as well.
The presence of a support person in a family dispute can significantly reduce the incidence of negative and destructive behaviour and promote greater cooperation by the parents.
The involvement of parent support persons can help in the following ways:
Reduce emotional stress on children, parents and their extended families.
Reduce parental alienation (a form of child abuse).
Reduce physical and emotional abuse of children
Reduce domestic violence involving the parties.
Reduce juvenile crime. Statistics reveal that most young offenders come from broken homes where family conflict was a major factor.
Reduce Hostile Parenting which is a form of child abuse
Reduce the abuse of police services.
Reduce false allegations against another parent.
Reduce legal expenses for families, with a resulting lowering in poverty and the need for social assistance.
Reduce in use of the adversarial court process.
Reduce costs at all levels of government, with a resulting tax savings to the community.