Overview of Our Original Study

Focus on finding and understanding the unmet needs of the family and the family system
Strengthen the family system to create a healthier family for everyone

Build trust relationship; meet parents where they are (physically, emotionally, spiritually); ‘Client as Hero;’ Mom & Dad prepare separate answers to questionnaires ahead of research team visit;
Seven two hour home visits over a ten month period; aggregate answers then validate with entire 12 families; impose an intervention and measure the response.

They have important insights to share and help other families. However, their ISOLATION takes them out of the mainstream of society so sharing of insights and answers is limited.
No one, Pastor, Educator, Doctor, etc, ever asked us about US
No one ever asked about the rest of our family (nuclear & extended) and how they are affected
No one ever asked us about OUR faith expectations
No one ever asked us about our support system (Personal, relational, professional, educational, medical) or lack thereof, and why.
No one ever asked us about the difficulty of daily or routine tasks.
No one ever asked us about what stresses US.
No one ever asked us about what encourages us and what discourages us.
The ‘system/culture/norms/lack of time/lack of good solutions’ do not encourage us to talk about these things (1-8 above). This was the first time for many talking about these areas of holistic family life.

Each of these areas is ripe for innovative new solutions to improve the quality of family life.
Our research revealed:

265 Functional, Social & Spiritual JOBS to be done – including 95 spiritual JOBS
202 Stressors
40 Best practices that should be shared with other families and professionals
12 Criteria that could define their Ideal Church relationship
Over 100 new ‘ideas’ that could help improve their quality of life