David Allen

By David F. Allen, Keva Bethell, Marie Allen-Carroll and Flavia D’Alessandro

This chapter presents a cultural adaptation of a group process model as a resocialization project to confront social fragmentation in the Bahamas. The Family: People Helping People Project seeks to improve communication and socialization in New Providence, the capital of the Bahamas. The chapter provides an overview of The Family and addresses key elements along with clinical examples to show the success of the model. We also present the results of a pilot study carried out on The Family which further outlined the benefits of participating in the program. We hope that these insights are helpful in addressing community problems around the world, with the hope of reducing violence and social fragmentation.

Part of the book: Family Therapy

By Keva Bethell and David Allen

Background: The Bahamas has undergone a severe social fragmentation process due to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. Marginalized persons were offered free group therapy through The Family: People Helping People Project. Methods: We hypothesized that many of our participants were traumatized as children, therefore causing them to experience various psychological and physiological challenges as adults. The Allen Resocialization Scale can measure the resocialization of traumatized participants. Results: The results indicate that 98% of participants who were traumatized scored ‘excellent’, ‘good’ or ‘average’ on the Allen Resocialization Scale. Conclusions: Without The Family, these participants may have been ‘poorly’ re-socialized, wreaking havoc in the society. Therefore, the results suggest that Family support groups can be a protective factor against trauma experienced in childhood.

Part of the book: Child Abuse and Neglect