Family Check-Up - Online middle school version, formerly Positive Family Support

The Family Check-Up program, formerly Positive Family Support (PFS) program and Adolescent Transitions Program (ATP), is a multilevel, family-centered intervention targeting children at risk for problem behaviors or substance use and their families. Designed to address family dynamics related to the risk of adolescent problem behavior, the program is delivered to parents and their children in a middle school setting. Parent-focused segments of FCU concentrate on developing family management skills such as making requests, using rewards, monitoring, making rules, providing reasonable consequences for rule violations, problem solving, and active listening.

The program’s intermediate goal is to improve parents’ family management and communication skills. The long-term goal is to hinder development of adolescent antisocial behaviors and drug experimentation. To accomplish these goals, the intervention uses a “tiered” strategy and links universal, selected, and indicated intervention services available to families and youths. The FCU framework’s core feature is that specific intervention services are individually determined for each family, in order to adapt the provided treatment to their needs and motivational levels. The program promotes self-selection of the most appropriate intervention services based on systematic assessment of parent and child functioning.