What is Family Life Education?
What is Family Life Education?
Family Life Educators (FLE) bring family research and best practices to individuals, couples, families and parents via an educational approach in an effort to build strengths and avert problems. Many ask if it’s similar to family therapy or social work. There are indeed areas of overlap, but Family Life Education works on a prevention model—it teaches individuals and families to enrich family life and to prevent problems before they occur. Research shows that family problems are less damaging for people—and less expensive for society—when they can be addressed through prevention.
Using Public Health as an analogy, we no longer wait for children to contract measles, mumps or chicken pox and then offer treatment. The field of childhood infectious diseases has moved almost solely into the preventative realm —parent education and vaccinations. Family life education incorporates this same approach. (NCFR Brochure, 2011)