Effects of Intensive Family Preservation Services in Rural Tennessee on Parental Hopefulness with Families Affected by Substance Use.

This article describes how Building Strong Families in Rural Tennessee (BS-FinRT) increased hopefulness and helped to promote the policy goal of developing a recovery focus among families with vulnerabilities. These outcomes were achieved by implementing collaborative strategies for addressing issues of child safety, substance use, and family stability. Early analyses of the program's outcomes indicated an unexpected positive influence on parent and child hopefulness. Further analyses found that changes in hope between baseline and discharge correlated positively with changes over the same time period in problem severity, general functioning, and mental health symptomology.