Family Strong Hawaii

[Click on Picture to Go to www.FocusProject.org]

How Does FOCUS Work?

        FOCUS works with families to strengthen their skills in meeting many of the challenges and stressors commonly experienced by military families during wartime, including:

• 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.
• 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• Children may show concerning behaviors, such as acting argumentative, disruptive, aggressive, withdrawn, or tearful.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.

The goals of FOCUS include:

• Helping families 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
• Assisting couples to work more effectively as a team in parenting their children before, during, and after deployment
• Increasing parents’ skills in dealing more effectively with some of the emotional and behavioral reactions that children can have when experiencing stress

FOCUS Hawaii

Admin Office: MCBH, Building 216, Room 58
Training Office: Building 3022
Kaneohe Bay, HI 96863

808-257-7774 - office
808-257-1929 - fax