Research Objective and family selection criteria:

• 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

Our research approach: 

• 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.  

What did they tell us?  THE SURPRISING QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

1. 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.
2. No one, Pastor, Educator, Doctor, etc, ever asked us about US
   
3. No one ever asked about the rest of our family (nuclear & extended) and how they are affected
   
4. No one ever asked us about OUR faith expectations
   
5. No one ever asked us about our support system (Personal, relational, professional, educational, medical) or lack thereof, and why.
   
6. No one ever asked us about the difficulty of daily or routine tasks.
   
7. No one ever asked us about what stresses US.
   
8. No one ever asked us about what encourages us and what discourages us.
   
9. 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.

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