Celebrating Families! - Detailed Report

There is a time structure for each Celebrating Families! session with almost all being the same. This is important because people in recovery and children of alcoholics/addicts (COAs) especially, need agreed upon, predictable, and clear expectations in order to increase safety and build trust. It is highly recommended that the following format be followed exactly every week:

• Family Meal (30 Minutes): Meals are served for the whole family, modeling how to have a family meal. (Many families suffering effects of chemical dependency rarely eat together). We suggest that group leaders/facilitators serve the food, then sit with families as they eat. (It is best for staff to serve meals, due to possible issues of food hoarding.)
• Opening (20 Minutes): How the group begins often establishes the outcome. It is important to plan and to utilize the first few minutes of each session to build and strengthen the group. The same “ritual” opening creates a sense of safety and “I can count on this.” Try to keep openings to 10 minutes. Openings create an atmosphere in which participants are comfortable, build or re-establish trust and initiate group interaction. Play calming music to help center participants. Warmly greet participants, immediately directing them to an activity. In dealing with individuals who are not used to living with clear messages about appropriate behavior, it is important to establish immediately what will be expected. A complete list of rules and how to present them is included in session plans. Setting limits and enforcing consequences facilitates an environment of consistency ensuring trust and safety and makes sessions more fun and rewarding. Rules and consequences (agreements) need to be posted and reviewed at the beginning of each session. The review reminds all participants about appropriate behavior. The Opening Activity is usually a game or centering exercise designed to involve participants, as soon as they arrive. It is done consistently in order to help participants begin to develop trust and a sense of safety. The activity begins the meeting in a positive and fun way and usually relates to the session theme. It is meant to give participants an enjoyable experience to prepare them for the session’s teaching time. Teaching begins with a short review of the previous session’s content. The Review section includes check-in, announcements and Affirmations of Children for parents and Acts of Kindness for all children. Children (and later families) are asked to do one kind thing for someone else each week. This is to be done without accepting anything in return. In the group, children and eventually parents report what they did each week. These Acts of Kindness are added to a continuously growing list. As the list grows, participants visually see how their small acts of kindness add up, and discover that they make a difference in their families and communities.
• Insights for Living (60 Minutes): Following the review, the main theme of the session is presented during a short instruction time. Incorporated into the teaching time are learning activities that further teach the session theme. Celebrating Families! is an interactive curriculum with discovery, learning and role-play activities, adapted for age, language, and culture of group members.
• Closing (10 Minutes): As in the Opening Activity, each session closes in the same way. This brings a sense of ritual to the group, which is important to creating a sense of belonging. How a group ends is as important as how it begins. Group facilitators need to leave sufficient time to summarize briefly what occurred in group and to put closure to the session. Closure does not mean that all issues have been resolved or that everything planned has been accomplished. Closure means that the time for this session is ending and we need to name it, accept it and take leave of this portion of the day. Closure ends a particular session, builds a bridge to the next session and honors what has happened in this session. The purpose of concluding this section with the Unity Prayer or Serenity Prayer is to help participants learn alternative concepts of spirituality and that they are part of something larger than themselves. Additional aspects of the closing activities include: Having participants think about quotes from Twelve Step programs and great leaders (such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi) and applying them to their lives, “WOW” moments (Wonder of the World) which are introduced midway through the curriculum, ask participants to begin to see the beauty in the world around them.
• Connecting with My Family (30 Minutes): The activities used during this time are specifically designed to help families apply each session’s theme. It is important that all group leaders are encouraged to participate actively during Connecting with My Family.
• Book Exchange: At sites where families have time together between sessions, children’s books are available for families to take home each week to read together. Several of the large bookstores will provide children’s books as a community service.
  

Edwards, L.P., & Ray, J.A. (2005). Judicial perspectives on family drug treatment courts. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 56(3), 1-27.

Tisch, R., Dohse, D., & Sibley, L. (2005). Celebrating Families: An innovative approach for working with substance abusing families. The Source: Newsletter of the National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center, 14(1), 6-10.

Lutra Group (2006). Year One (FY “05-06) Evaluation report for Celebrating Families! Grant summary, Retrieved May 12, 2008, from: http://www.celebratingfamilies.net/PDF/YearOneEvaluationReport.pdf.