Family Advocacy Program (FAP)

Department of the Navy
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

Spouse Abuse

• Goal: To prevent spouse maltreatment, to intervene effectively when incidents do occur, to promote healthy family life, and to improve readiness and retention.

• Services: This program addresses the prevention, identification, evaluation, intervention, rehabilitation/behavioral education and counseling, follow up, and reporting of spouse abuse. Spouse abuse includes, but is not limited to, assault, battery, threat to injure or kill, or any other act of force, violence, or emotional abuse, or undue physical or psychological trauma, or fear of physical injury. This includes physical injury, sexual assault, intentional destruction of property, psychological abuse and stalking.

Child Abuse

• Goal: This program addresses the prevention, identification, evaluation, intervention, rehabilitation/behavioral education and counseling, follow up, and reporting of child abuse. Child abuse includes the physical injury, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, deprivation of necessities, or other abuse of a child by a parent, guardian, employee of a residential facility, or any person providing out of home care, who is responsible for the child's welfare, under circumstances that indicate the child's welfare is harmed or threatened. The term encompasses both acts and omissions on the part of such a responsible person.

• Services. This program addresses child physical abuse, child neglect, and child sexual abuse.

The Family Advocacy Program (FAP) is established by the following instructions:

• DoD Directive 6400.1

• SECNAVINST 1752.3A

• OPNAVINST 1752.2A

This instruction requires all Navy and Marine Corps agencies, departments, and individuals to report any incident or suspected incident of child abuse to a Family Advocacy Representative (FAR) for the Navy or a Family Advocacy Program Manager (FAPM) for the Marine Corps. If a victim of spouse abuse comes to a military treatment facility (MTF) seeking treatment for injuries related to abuse, the case shall be referred to the FAR/FAPM immediately. In the case of major physical injury or indication of or propensity or intent by the offender to inflict major physical injury, the appropriate law enforcement/security department officials shall be notified.

• The FAP is designed to prevent child and spouse maltreatment, to intervene effectively when incidents do occur, to promote healthy family life, and to improve readiness and retention. Services include prevention programs, identification and assessment of alleged abuse incidents, interventions to stop the abuse and protect victims, and counseling and rehabilitation programs.

• Family Advocacy (FA) is a leadership issue. Experience has shown that the FAP can be very effective in helping families and in supporting the Navy mission. Command support is critical to the success of the FAP.

• When a report of child or spouse abuse is received, the FAR/FAPM is notified and schedules separateassessment interviews with the people involved, including children. Crisis intervention, risk assessment, and safety planning occur as soon as possible.

• The command may be asked to take action to ensure the safety of all persons involved. These actions may include issuance of a Military Protective Order (MPO) restricting a service member offender from contact with the victim, making provisions for the service member to stay in the barracks temporarily, or supporting family members who need to go to a shelter.

• In child abuse cases, the FAR/FAPM makes required notifications to the State's Child Protection Service (CPS) agency; (all child abuse/neglect allegations), Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) (felony level allegations), and to the Navy Personnel Command (NPC-66), (all child sexual abuse allegations).

• The FAR/FAPM obtains results of all investigations and evaluations that have been done and presents this information to a Case Review Committee (CRC), the multidisciplinary team responsible for reviewing and approving case assessments, determining the status of a case, and monitoring case progress.

• A command representative may attend that portion of the CRC meeting concerned with the specific case of  one of his/her members but is there in the role of consultant and does not participate in the case status determination decision. After careful deliberation, the CRC makes a determination as to whether the case is:

• Substantiated, i.e., the preponderance of available information indicates abuse did occur. This means that the information that supports the occurrence of abuse is of greater weight, or more convincing than the information that indicates that the abuse and/or neglect did not occur.

• Unsubstantiated, did not occur, i.e., a case that has been investigated and the allegation of abuse and/or neglect is unsupported. The family needs no family advocacy services.

• Unsubstantiated-unresolved, i.e., a case that has been investigated and the available information is insufficient to support the allegation of abuse and/or neglect. Referral to family support services may occur.

The CRC makes recommendations for rehabilitation and counseling for the alleged offender, and these are placed in writing for their commanding officer. The alleged offender will be provided with a copy of the recommendations. In cases in which the offender is a family member, recommendations are sent to the commanding officer of the sponsor. The CRC recommendations are related to the risk factors identified during the risk assessment and usually include counseling, education programs, and support services. Disciplinary or administrative action may be recommended.

The service member's commanding officer may concur or non-concur with the CRC recommendations. Command options include directing the service member to participate in all recommendations from the CRC and/or taking administrative or disciplinary actions. Factors that may be considered include military performance; potential for further productive service; potential for successful rehabilitation; acceptance of responsibility for the abusive behavior; genuine motivation to change; and impact of the disposition on the family.