FDS Support Groups Evaluation 2014.
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“We are so close, we can help these people”
“I like to help with my experience.”
“At the end of the evening we sometimes give our story. It is good for parents to hear
that there are good news stories. We got through it (son’s binge drinking).”
“I am still coming to meetings and will continue to do so as it helps me to be with
people going through similar problems in their lives, and it helps knowing I’m not
alone.
The input from regulars is valued by other participants, for example: “
I found the
support group through advice from a medical professionals. I needed to hear other
people’s stories so that I wouldn’t feel so hopeless. I’m very pleased my ex husband
came as he has no other contacts apart from me and his son. This will help him too, I
feel.”
Overall impacts
In addition to the benefits around certain themes, a number of the comments
concerned the overall benefit of group participation, including the following:
“I don’t know how I would have survived the journey without FDS.”
“Thankyou. If it weren’t for FDS I really don’t know where I would have ended up. I
felt depressed, alone and worthless as a parent until I met and discussed my story
with members of our local FDS Support Group and listed to the challenges that
others were also facing. Together we listen and comfort and support each other in
this journey which is confusing, confronting and lonely.”
“I feel that I have grown so much since attending the group.”
“This group not only changed my life its consequently had a massive impact on the
lives of three young children.”
“FDS, has saved my marriage, my son and my sanity.”
A number also commented that they wished they had found the group earlier, for
example, as this mother’s comment shows:
“I wish we had come 3 years earlier – our son’s marriage may have been saved and
he would still be a medical manager and we would have not gone through such
trauma and pain.”
