Family Advocacy Program – Process Evaluation
The Army Community Service (ACS) Family Advocacy Program (FAP) offers services (commanders’ briefings, troop trainings, prevention campaigns, and classes) that are designed to strengthen Army families, and enhance resilience, by providing prevention education encouraging healthy, violence-free relationships, nurturing parenting skills, and providing direct services to families impacted by abuse.Initially, the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State (Clearinghouse) was asked to conduct an outcome evaluation of specific ACS FAP prevention activities; however, this goal was not realized due to program constraints found in an initial inquiry (e.g., a lack of program standardization). Thus, an effort was initiated to catalog FAP class offerings Army-wide. The goal of this effort was to identify commonalities and strengths in offerings and make recommendations for improvements in program content, implementation, and evaluation. Three topic areas were chosen to investigate: anger management, parenting, and communication.