Dr. Gary Sweeten is a friend of Key Ministry and a passionate advocate within the church for families impacted by disabilities. Gary currently serves as Founder and Chairman LifeWay Counseling Centers and is President of Sweeten Life Systems, a research, coaching, consulting and training organization for professional and peer caring. Gary blogs at www.sweetenlife.com and http://garysweetenblogspotcom.blogspot.com/. Sweeten Life received a $300,000 research grant from the Hatton Foundation to identify the most critical needs of families of children with special needs. Gary’s team will be presenting the findings of the research this Saturday at The Village Family Fall Gathering/Conference at Christ Church in Mason, OH. Today and tomorrow, Gary will be discussing the underpinnings of the research they undertook in the greater Cincinnati area, along with some preliminary results of their work.

The Research: Beginning in March of 2009 and ending in April of 2010, a research team from Sweeten Life Systems and 12 Cincinnati families who have a child with a special need spent over 7000 hours in total, reflecting, analyzing, & sharing together about the unmet felt needs those families experience related to the caregiving of their child.

To our knowledge this is the first such study to focus primarily on the family’s needs, whereas most previous research has focused on the needs of the child.

The goal of this exploratory, in-depth work was to more fully understand what those needs are – personal needs, household needs, spiritual needs, emotional needs, mom’s needs, dad’s needs, at home needs, away from home needs.  In effect, anything and everything that affects conducting family life.

Of course Sweeten Life had an objective:  ‘Know the needs first, then, begin to develop solutions that could strengthen family life, resulting in better family life for everyone involved, and consequently reducing the high divorce rate among these families.”

Although our research is consistent with our original hypotheses, the needs are greater, the stresses more intense and the lack of support more acute than we supposed.  Here are some of our findings. “In the United States there are sixty-five million people providing care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend. (Jacqui Moskowitz, Ex Dir of the Family Support Center, New Jersey, USA) Disability is the largest minority in America.

Facts: There has been a tremendous increase in kids and elderly persons with chronic disabilities.

Autism Spectrum Disorders have a 6000% increase in the last few decades-Why? What can we do?

Depression and Anxiety have a tenfold increase in the last century. Why? What can we do?

Estimates are that over 20% of the kids in elementary school have a diagnosed mental, emotional, relational or physical disability. Why? What can we do?

Finally, some 85% of the parents who have a child with a chronic disability get a divorce making the stresses, strains and financial crises much greater. Why? What can we do?

There are many speculations but few answers. What can we do to cure these ongoing, chronic issues? We in the West have medical and psychological and religious traditions that focus on total CURES. We have developed incredibly good medicines, surgical procedures, technologies and interventions to change and heal. I have a stent in my chest that saved my life. However, it did not cure me. My lifestyle had to change because I have a chronic problem that is incurable but treatable. I have prayed for healing and experienced small but significant improvements but my family and I must live with the situation on a daily basis forever.

Many of you are caring for children or loved ones with chronic issues. All of us wish there were a total cure for them but in most cases there are no miracle treatments. But we have learned a lot about how to increase our quality of life with small, incremental healings that come from God, medical treatment and hard work.

Let me offer a funny statistic that you may find difficult to see its application. How do we insure that our kids in general will make better grades? What do we need to do to boost their learning? The adults in the house that kids live in have lot of books. You want to boost your kid’s grades? Buy more books!

Oh, you say. “Of course. The parents read to their kids so they study more and get better grades”. That was my thought but that is not right. The parents don’t even have to read the books, just have them and the kids do better. Why? We don’t know but it works.

When we take a look at the things that bring healing and relief plus improve the quality of life for parents, kids and the family, the answers are not always obvious. They don’t operate in a straight cause and effect manner. Some of the time it comes down to attitude and interactions more that a specific intervention.

That is why we at Sweeten Life Ministry do not follow a disease model in our research and interventions. The Disease Model focuses mostly or only on the diagnosis and the illness or problems. In fact people who follow the disease model can forget that the patient is a person with a family and friends who must live with the symptoms. So, we include the patient, her personal concerns, her family and friends and spiritual support system in our treatments.

Back in the Eighties when these chronic diseases were growing rapidly, I wanted to discover how to help the parents. I read as many journals and books as I could on the impact of parental cooperation on the progress of the disease or disability. I found very few resources since most authors are interested in treating the child’s diagnosis.

One did though and it said this: When Dad and Mom went together to the doctor with their chronically ill child it helped that child progress more rapidly in symptom reduction than if mom went alone. All that was necessary for the child to thrive was for the parents to be together with their child at the doctor’s office.

Why? That is like having lots of books in the house to boost grades. The environment makes a big difference in quality of life for the child and for the rest of the family. A positive relationship between mom and dad is critical to the child’s improvement. A positive relationship between the parents is critical to a child’s improvement.

SLS builds great relationships with God, self and others. The Family Model encourages every member to grow in love, joy and grace as well as in healthier lifestyles. Our research went far beyond the digital surveys we sent to the parents. We spent a couple of hours with each family going over their survey responses and discussing their answers and questions while playing with their children. And, all of it was taped so we could study it when we got back home.

Tomorrow: Preliminary Results of the Research