Tiffany Bass-Jackson has passion for helping families

Since 2008, Tiffany Bass-Jackson had been a devoted therapist and team coordinator at The Family Center in Columbus, fulfilling her passion of helping families in times of need through a counseling program.

Last year, the Columbus native graduated, in essence, to director of the Families and Schools Together (FAST) program, one of four wings of The Family Center, the others being Big Brothers Big Sisters, Consumer Credit Counseling and the Family Counseling she had been a vital member of since 2008. The Family Center is led by Chief Executive Officer Monique Lopez-Turner.

The common thread in the work Bass-Jackson does is the enjoyment she receives from helping a mother and father bond more with their children or develop healthy habits that lead to more rewarding and productive lives for all involved.

FAST currently is in a handful of Muscogee County schools, with The Family Center having very high hopes of expanding the program to more schools in Columbus, in Harris County and across the Chattahoochee River in Russell County. But that will take money, with the center and its staff talking with anyone and everyone to find additional funds.

The Ledger-Enquirer talked recently with Bass-Jackson, 41, about her job, the FAST program and her passion for working with families and seeing them progress can bring to all involved. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity with an expanded version at www.ledger-enquirer.com.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your work?

A. I mostly enjoy working with the families. For me personally, family comes first. So, when I’m working with others, I want them to put their families first. That’s mainly what I enjoy, working closely with the families and changing families ... I want to reduce the overall stress in the daily lives of families.

Q. Explain the program in general?

A. FAST is an international evidence-based family engagement program. It thrives on building strong relationships within the schools, within families and also within the community. It is an eight-week program. We’re in five schools here in Muscogee County, and we have one cycle in the spring and one cycle in the fall. We just completed our spring cycle and served over 55 families at our five schools.

Q. What schools are you in?

A. We are at Georgetown, Fox, Rigdon Road, Dimon Magnetic Academy and J.D. Davis.

Q. You want to be in more schools I take it?

A. Yes, our phones are ringing here at The Family Center with other schools wanting the FAST program.

Q. What do you need to make that happen?

A. Funding. There is no charge to the families we serve and there are a lot of expenses to make the program happen.

Q. So the five schools you’re in now is what you can handle financially?

A. That’s correct.

Q. An expansion would require more staff?

A. We would definitely need more staff. The FAST staff is currently at three positions, myself and then we have two team coordinators, and we’re currently handling all five schools. The two coordinators have two schools each and I have one school.

Q. You go out and speak about the program to spread the word about the need for it?

A. Yes. That is part of my job as director is to make people knowledgeable and aware of the FAST program.

Q. Are you comfortable speaking to people in general?

A. To be honest, it depends on the situation. But yes, I’ve been doing the United Way allocation for the past four years and I do a lot of things out in the community, so I love spreading the word about FAST and I love talking about the families that we serve and I love talking about The Family Center. I don’t have a problem communicating about something that’s dear to me.

Q. What are your daily job duties like, being in the office and visiting schools?

A. The day-to-day life of a FAST team coordinator who’s running the program is a lot of legwork. There are so many components that make up the FAST program, from conducting that one night a week (gathering with families), shopping for the family meals, shopping for the baskets for the families. Each family wins a lottery basket ... and they’re responsible for the meal for next week. We have to help with the meals. We have to help shop for the lottery baskets. We have to communicate with our families. We have to be over at the schools, setting things up.

Q. What activities occur during a FAST night?

A. FAST is one night a week for eight weeks. The families, the first thing they’re going to do, is have a family meal. That’s one of the things that families don’t get to do at home with their busy schedules, is to be able to sit down and have a meal together. So we start out each night having a family meal, saying hello to the families. We also do an activity called a feeling charade. That’s getting parents and children to act out and identify their feelings. Just from that activity alone, a lot of parents say: I didn’t know my child felt that way. I didn’t know that they were feeling sad about something that happened at home. Or a spouse might say: I didn’t know my wife was feeling angry or unhappy.

So just from the activity that night, it helps the families to better communicate. We also have an activity that’s called special play. That’s one-on-one time with a FAST child and their parent, and that’s just quality time, and they’re playing with pretty much a bag of junk. It could be toilet tissue rolls or tops from peanut butter jars or anything that they can sit and play with that child. That’s something that we also encourage, if you have more than one child at home, because a lot of our parents say: I have three children. I don’t know how to divide the time up. They want individual attention. We always prefer them to do special play; we encourage that activity at home.

Q. This activity takes place at the schools?

A. Yes. It’s in the cafeteria in each of the schools.

Q. Part of it is getting participants to open up a bit socially?

A. Yes. We’re helping people who are in domestic violence situations. We’re helping parents who are homeless. We are helping children who have special needs. We’re helping parents with a number of different obstacles and challenges that they are going through. They get to openly discuss these issues, and our trained team provides resources to these families and connects them with the right people in the community to receive the help that they need.

Q. Are these typically economically challenged families?

A. A few, some of them are, but not all of them.

Q. Does it ever become emotional for you?

A. Oh, yes. If you attended any one of our FAST graduations you would be in tears. The thing about it is the families have to write affirmations to their children, so the parents will stand up there. We had a dad go through one cycle and he had three little girls and during graduation, when he had to stand up and read those affirmations to his girls, the whole cafeteria was in tears and so was the dad. He said he tells them he loves them everyday, but to be able to share this and look them in their eyes and give them this individualized attention and expressing my feelings for them and how they have bettered his life, was just very amazing.

I also had a mom in a domestic violence situation. She couldn’t even make eye contact with anyone and, by week eight, for her to stand up in front of the cafeteria and read her affirmations out loud to her children … her children were in tears, mom was in tears. So it can become very emotional because we are changing families. We are building family cohesion and bringing these families together.

(Families and Schools Together) is a national organization based out of Madison, Wisc. It is an evidenced-based program, so parents, before they sign up, go through an evaluation process. They do a pre-survey and a post-survey. We can better capture the long-term effects of the program by doing the survey.

Q. How do families get involved?

A. They can sign up for the FAST program a number of ways. It’s open enrollment. We’ll send out brochures to all of the teachers for those kindergarten through third-grade students, and the parents can sign up that way. Everyone has the opportunity to sign up. But sometimes you also have those teachers who say: Hey, this student in my class, his family could really benefit from the FAST program. So sometimes the teachers do identify those families that are in greater need for the program.

Q. Can you be turned down for the program?

A. Yes, they are turned down at times due to the number of families that we’re able to serve. It absolutely goes right back to funding. Sometimes we’ll have a waiting list at our schools. If we’re over 12 or 14 families, we might have to tell them, you know, you’ll have to wait to go through the next cycle.

Q. It appears you do become attached to the families you help?

A. Yes, all of my families. I have families who have gone through five years ago and they’ll still call me or text me and say, Happy Mother’s Day, Miss Tiffany. Or they’ll let me know about their job promotion or their children going to middle school now. So we keep in contact with these families constantly. It becomes a lifelong bond, because throughout those eight weeks bonds are built between those families and the teams. I get extremely attached to my children and my families through the FAST program.

Q. How many families helped through the years?

A. The FAST program was actually implemented here in Muscogee County in 2007, so we have served over 500 families.

Q. What’s the most difficult or challenging aspect of your job?

A. The toughest part about my job is not being able to serve more families, to have to turn families away that I know are in need of the program. Or having to tell a family that I’m sorry, you’re not going to be able to go back through it, because a lot of families want to continue going through the program. If they have more than one child, they may want the next child to go through the program, and I have to say we’re full for this cycle. But I want to be able to serve as many families as the cafeteria can hold.

Q. What do you serve at the dinners?

A. It depends on the family, whatever they decide to bring. Whoever wins the basket that night, they’re responsible for the main meal for the next week. So we’ve had dinners as simple as chili dogs all the way to steak, barbecue ribs, macaroni and cheese. It’s left up to whatever that family decides to bring that next week.

Q. Is the FAST program active in the summer as well?

A. Yes, and that’s called the FAST Works program. After the eight weeks, the parents often are like: Oh, Miss Tiffany, what are we going to do? We’re going to miss you guys.

FAST Works is the once a month, parent-led activity with the parents getting together. We might go skating or we might have a cookout, or we might do something for the community or go to the museum. So we still try to keep the family cohesion going by doing those different activities during the summer.

Q. The theme or thread I see in the program seems to be communication and bonding?

A. Yes. We want to increase parental involvement. With a lot of programs, they’re serving just the child. That’s the unique thing about the FAST program is we serve the entire family. The entire family is gaining knowledge, they’re increasing communication, and they’re increasing their family time and family bonding ... We know the parents that we serve need someone they can trust and that they can relate to. So that’s pretty much what we do through the FAST program. We have a team that can help families in many different ways.

Q. When does the fall program begin?

A. Our fall cycles at all of the schools will start probably around the first week of September. We give them time to start school in August and kind of get settled, and then we start our recruitment process.

Q. Why do you stick with this job?

A. When I’m in my bed at night getting ready to go to sleep, and I might have been so tired from that day of conducting the FAST program. But when a parent comes to me and says: You know, Tiffany, I have drank alcohol fewer days than I did before starting this program, or when a family comes to me and says: I pay more attention to my child now. That’s huge. There’s nothing more rewarding than to know that I’m a part of that.

Q. You don’t mind taking your job home with you?

A. No, I don’t. In the FAST world, it’s never ending. If my families need me, I’m going to be there ... It is the most rewarding job that a person can have. I mean, what’s more important than family.

Q. Anything else you would like to share?

A. Yes. In 2008, we had a family go through the FAST program. She was going through a very difficult time in her life. So she started off with her three children in the program. After that, she was like: I love this program. This program has helped me so much. I was at a very low place.

Then she started volunteering for the FAST program. We have to serve the food and we have to clean up, so she wanted to help out with that. Then she became a FAST team member on one of the teams. She was a parent partner, and now she is one of our team coordinators. So she is a product of the FAST program. She went back to school and obtained her degree. One of her children are graduating from high school this year. It’s just amazing how we change lives … It turned her life completely around.

This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 10:23 PM with the headline "Tiffany Bass-Jackson has passion for helping families."