FOCUS
Bldg. 13150
Phone: 760-859-6079
FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) provides family resiliency training for active duty military service members and their families. The service is provided in a 6-8 session format to individual families with children and couples wishing to strengthen their relationship. Consultations, educational workshops and small skill-building groups are also available.
Wartime deployment takes a toll on both the service member and family members on the home-front, with multiple deployments often causing additional stress. Resiliency is the ability to effectively cope with, adapt to, and overcome this stress. FOCUS teaches specific skills related to family and couple communication, emotional regulation, problem solving and goal setting to promote strong military families.
FOCUS training is free of charge to active duty military members and their families. FOCUS has multiple locations aboard Camp Pendleton and maintains family friendly hours to accommodate your schedule. Information shared with FOCUS staff (including your identity and participation) is kept confidential according to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) standards and will not be disclosed to other military families or military command. If the safety of a FOCUS participant becomes a concern, FOCUS staff is required to comply with both base policies and local/state laws.
FOCUS works with families and couples to strengthen their skills in meeting many of the challenges and stressors commonly experienced by military families during wartime, including:
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Children often become worried, sad, or even angry about their parent leaving for deployment.
- Children and parents miss sharing special events together (e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, child taking their first steps), as well as the daily routines of their lives.
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Parents may have a hard time readjusting to their usual roles upon return from deployment (e.g., the non-deployed parent may be used to handling all the household tasks by themselves, the deployed parent may have difficulty adjusting to being in a non-combat environment again).
- Children may show concerning behaviors, such as acting argumentative, disruptive, aggressive, withdrawn, or tearful.
- Similarly, couples may argue more, have a harder time communicating, or may withdraw from each other.
FOCUS Goals: -
Helping families and couples to identify and build upon their existing strengths and positive coping strategies
- Increasing parents’ and children’s understanding of how different family members might react to wartime stress
- Helping service members and family members communicate and better understand how each were affected by deployment
- Working with spouses to better support one another in dealing with the stressors that can arise from long separations
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Assisting couples to work more effectively as a team in parenting their children before, during, and after deployment
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Increasing parents’ skills in dealing more effectively with some of the emotional and behavioral reactions that children can have when experiencing stress