Family Focus Gets Reprieve Until Dec. 31

By WY Daily Staff Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Playtime with a Family Focus group. (Photo courtesy of Family Focus-Grafton)

No one challenged whether the program “worked.” No one suggested it could be done more cheaply. But Family Focus, a program that began in 1983 with a family violence prevention program grant, is at its core a program that nips problems before a crisis has a chance to take root.

That, said Colonial Community Services Board Executive Director David Coe, is the problem.

“We all believe in prevention. Nobody funds it,” he told the CSB board during a nearly four-hour hearing on plans to cut four programs to meet expected state funding shortfalls. Cutting the programs, including Family Focus, would achieve a net $430,000 savings in a $13 million budget.

A steady stream of Family Focus participants, both new to the program and those whose children had grown up and out of it, shared with the board experiences of how the groups had made them better parents and created support networks that sustained them still. Preschool-age children chattered during testimony and giggled when their parents, many of them mothers, walked back from the microphone.

They were professionals with early education and mental health treatment backgrounds, military families whose moves and deployments created stress, those who had rebounded from a crisis, and even one dad whose parenting skills were developed by Family Focus’ Linkages program for those behind bars, then nurtured after his release with a weekly playgroup for dads and their children.

Some asked the board to reconsider cutting the program, but most asked for a reprieve from the planned Oct. 1 end date.

In the end, the board unanimously did just that and agreed to fund the program through Dec. 31. They encouraged the Family Focus Parents Advisory Council, staff and all other interested parties to use the time to find other ways to raise the $170,000 the CSB kicks in to run the program. An additional $75,000 comes to the program through grants and user fees or donations.

Board member Victoria Diggs of Poquoson said she felt like a firefighter trying to decide whether to put out the roaring blaze or the embers ready to ignite. The decisions, she said, "have been imposed on us by the state. Where are we going to put the water?"

Coe warned the board that delaying the program shutdown by three months would likely result in an eliminated position later in the year, since every month meant about $12,000 in added expenses. That wasn’t the worst news, however. Coe spoke of state-mandated mental health programs, many in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, that have remained while the funding goes away. He described state funding cuts to state psychiatric hospitals, like Eastern State, which then push the financial responsibility for a patient’s care on to localities.

“What we have in front of us tonight is very likely not the end but just the beginning,” he said. “We’re experiencing cuts in services that already begin to fray the edges of the safety net.”

That safety net, many speakers told the board, is held together by programs like Family Focus proven to prevent problems and intervene early when an issue arises.

Brenda Snead, the former Family Focus coordinator who now works for the Department of Social Services, reminded the board of what the treatment community knows well: “Prevention is far less expensive and more effective than treatment.” Without prevention efforts like Family Focus, she said, “the need will continue to grow and we will never keep up.”

Parents like Lynn Cunningham of Seaford told the board of their experiences arriving in Virginia from other states, far from the support of grandparents who would “stand there and say, ‘This is what you do’.”

Ten years and three children later, Family Focus groups and staff “were my savior,” Cunningham said. “People will still have children. Without Family Focus, where will these people go?”

Jennifer Wong, who served as president of the Family Focus parents advisory council for three years, and parent Lori Jacobson hope those people will still be able to call on Family Focus.

They’re among a group working on a two-year business plan to take Family Focus on its own. The group put together a preliminary plan last week, after getting word the program would be cut by month’s end. With more grants and community support, including corporate sponsorships, they’re hopeful the group can continue.