The Circle of Care campaign highlights stories of resilience from families who have received care in one of the UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center’s seven family programs. To commemorate the Center’s 10 year anniversary, the campaign will run for the next seven weeks in the Jewish Journal, thanks to the generous support of Founders Jane and Marc Nathanson.
The UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center (NFRC) celebrates its 10 year anniversary this week with the launch of the “Circle of Care” campaign. The campaign features stories of resilience from families who have received care in one of the UCLA NFRC’s family psychological health and wellness programs. “Circle of Care” highlights the UCLA NFRC’s continued commitment to helping families become stronger in the face of adversity.
“We are so grateful for the generosity of Founders Jane and Marc Nathanson in extending support for the “Circle of Care” campaign,” said Dr. Patricia Lester, Jane and Marc Nathanson Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center. “We are hopeful that this campaign will help us to reach out to the community and increase awareness of our family resilience services throughout Los Angeles County and beyond.”
The UCLA NFRC is dedicated to bridging the gap between program research and the dissemination of best practices for promoting wellness and mitigating distress in families facing challenges. The UCLA NFRC team has served more than half a million children, families and community members through a range of service, education, clinical and training programs.
The UCLA NFRC family resilience team has developed one such innovative program which represents the collaborative teamwork that characterizes clinical care at the UCLA Health System: the integrated family resilience program is entitled, ”Operation Mend-FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress). This partnership brings together UCLA Operation Mend’s expert reconstructive surgical and care team with the UCLA NFRC’s FOCUS Family Resilience Training™ model. Patients undergoing treatment and care for combat injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families receive psychological health support that provides the opportunity to improve communication, problem solve, and set family goals, and to address the impact of combat injuries on both Veterans and their family members. For many spouses and children of Operation Mend patients, Operation Mend-FOCUS is their first opportunity to open up about how the injury has impacted them individually and as a family. Operation Mend-FOCUS is just one way that the UCLA NFRC extends the “Circle of Care” to families and helps them discover their strengths.
Jane and Marc Nathanson originally founded the Nathanson Family Resource Center with a vision and passion for eradicating the stigma of mental illness and connecting families dealing with mental illness to community programs. Still in existence, the center offers a reading library, provides family education and community services, and houses several support groups for families dealing with mental illness. Ongoing collaborations with a wide range of mental health programs position the center to provide and respond sensitively to the needs of its families.
“The Nathanson Family Resource Center is a wonderful place for us families to learn about resources, connect with professionals and meet other families going through similar problems,” comments one family visitor. “The Nathanson Center is a comfortable spot where family members can come together to chat, share ideas, and build new friendships.”
Over the years, families have continually expressed their gratitude for the utility and accessibility of the Nathanson Center. Whether families are seeking a respite from the demands of clinical treatment settings, resources on the impact of mental illness, information on services for continuing care after discharge, or a welcoming environment to hold support group meetings, the Nathanson Family Resource Center provides families with tools to overcome the challenges that they encounter when a loved one is in crisis.
In 2011, the Nathanson Family Resource Center expanded to bring together a robust portfolio of resilience building programs devoted to the continued mission of helping families adapt to and overcome challenges. Services and training programs include a range of successful initiatives that support families living with a child’s serious illness, parents giving birth or adopting children for the first time, youth at risk for homelessness, and military and Veteran families and couples managing transitions. The resulting UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center, with Dr. Patricia Lester as the Director, continues to advance the commitment of the Nathanson family to help families become more resilient in the face of adversity.
Each UCLA NFRC initiative is grounded in rigorous science, which is then translated into accessible programming to enhance health and well-being for families. Not only does the UCLA NFRC provide direct services to families, but they also connect clinicians, educators, and families to the latest in behavioral research about family functioning and resiliency. By training future generations of service providers, clinicians and researchers, the UCLA NFRC works to integrate family-centered research and services into local communities and existing systems of care. Finally, in alignment with the UCLA Health System’s commitment to innovation, the UCLA NFRC has developed a preventive intervention that utilizes a mobile application platform and web-based virtual environment to integrate remote delivery of family-centered, resilience building tools.
No matter where families are, the UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center offers a “Circle of Care” through programs and services to help families discover their inherent strengths.
Download the complete “Circle of Care” ad series here.
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For more information about the UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center, visit http://nfrc.ucla.edu or www.facebook.com/UCLANFRC