Community spotlight: Guiding Good Choices Family Connection Summits

In November and December 2025, four CPWI Coalitions and two DFC Coalitions in King County partnered with Seattle Public Schools, Highline School District, Seattle Parks and Recreation, UW Social Development Research Group and Seattle Children’s Research Institute to pilot an adaptation of Guiding Good Choices aimed at trying to increase family participation in this evidence based prevention program.

The coalitions worked with UW SDRG, the GGC developer, to adapt the GGC format from 5-6 weekly sessions to see if they could come up with a more engaging format for families. With the help of UW, they came up with a “Family Summit” model where kids and parents/caregivers came together on a Saturday for 4.5 hours to complete the Introduction and Refusal Skills sessions of GGC in one day and then 3 additional online follow up sessions were provided. 

This ambitious offering included three Family Connection Summits at different locations (Denny Middle School, Aki Kurose Middle School and Yesler Community Center) within a four week period!  

Some numbers combined for all 3 events:

  • There were 65 parents/caregivers and 14 grandparents for a total of 79 adult participants.
  • They supported 47 youth participants.  
  • Over 40 staff and partners contributed to making the events a success.
  • Facilitators for parents spoke 7 different languages including: English , Spanish, Somali, Oromo, Amharic, Tigringa and Vietnamese. 80% of the adult participants required an interpreter. 
  • Over 400 slices of pizza served!

Some achievements include:

  • More families had multiple caregivers attend the Summits.
  • Families held a “family meeting” to plan family fun right there at the event – getting over the hurdle of trying to organize their first family meeting.
  • Kids and caregivers got to practice refusal skills together with the kids showing their parents that they can be trusted and know how to avoid trouble.
  • Kids got to share what they like about their families and some things that bug them about their parents and what their parents could do differently – all this helped increase family communication, bonds and connection.

Schools, families and partners seemed to like the idea of having a “Family Summit” to improve family bonds and communication and they got to see Guiding Good Choices (GGC) in action and became more invested in promoting this program in the future. 

Special thanks to the following coalitions for a great collaborative prevention effort in King County: Healthy Youth Central Area Network, SE Seattle PEACE Coalition, Southwest Seattle Youth Alliance, White Center North Highline Coalition For Drug Free Youth, Westside Healthy Empowered Youth (DFC) and Latinx Dream Coalition (DFC).