A state network of family support services: The Massachusetts Family Support Demonstration Project

Mental health professionals have recently begun to provide supportive services to families of the mentally ill. In assisting family members who are either living with or caring for a relative with mental illness, support programs may provide a variety of services, including respite care, peer support groups, educational workshops, supportive counseling, and service linkage. While an important step forward professional family support programs remain rare, serving only limited areas. This article describes a multisite network of professional family support programs funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health during the late 1980s. A history and description of the demonstration project is provided, as is an overview of findings from a two-year project evaluation. Evaluation results indicate program participation to be associated with a number of favorable family outcomes, including reduced level of family stress and burden. While these findings suggest program expansion is warranted, qualitative findings point to several noteworthy implementational difficulties experienced by support services, many of them flowing from ambiguities surrounding the concept of ''family support'' as a service philosophy and model of practice. Copyright (C) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd