Family Resource Institute

FAS Times News Letter Download

Origin of the FAS Times Newsletter

1991 - 2008

People around the world have described FAS Times as a vital educational reference, not only for affected individuals and parents, but for professionals in the health care, education, chemical dependency, developmental disability, mental health, vocational rehabilitation, child welfare and criminal justice systems. So where did all of this start?

In 1991, the Washington State Adoption Support program* managers were receiving a lot of frantic phone calls from desperate parents having trouble raising children with special needs. So they asked Jocie DeVries (mother of two children with FASD who were on the adoption support program) to write a summary of her family’s experience raising children diagnosed with this condition.

The subsequent letter she wrote was mailed out to every family receiving Adoption Support. Everyone concerned recognized the tremendous value of parents pooling their information on this little recognized and often misunderstood disability. Jocie was encouraged by adoption support staff to continue and expand the communication and information exchange between families. The resulting body of information came to be called the Collective Family Experience on FASD because it described the behaviors and experiences most common to families raising children with FASD. The Collective Family Experience grew and developed into a vital body of information and expertise, straight from the wisdom of practice and frontline experience.

Thus Jocie’s original letter naturally and easily evolved into an informal newsletter sent out to other parents, which became a more formal but intermittent newsletter called FAS Times in 1992. We soon started to get inquiries from professionals in many service systems about children and adults with FASD, so we added them to our mailing list. In 1995, the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse in DSHS recognized the value of the newsletter and funded the FAS Family Resource Institute for its quarterly publication through June 2008. At the height of our circulation we had about 3,000 parents and professionals on our mailing list from all across the U.S. and several foreign countries.

Although we will no longer be producing new issues of FAS Times, this important body of knowledge will not be lost. We hope to make the PDF’s of all back issues available soon on this website.

In the meantime our Family Preservation Blog and other publications shall continue to gather input from the Collective Family Experience and distribute it in other venues. Our educational initiatives are constantly evolving as we work to fulfill our mission: to help others identify, understand and care for affected individuals and to prevent future generations from having to live with this disability.

FAS * FRI Information Packet (.pdf) Download

This packet contains information from the FAS Collective Family Experience, gathered from hundreds of families since 1990. It is the mission of the FAS Family Resource Institute to help parents, caregivers and professionals in the identification, understanding and care of individuals with FASD and their families and to prevent future generations from having to live with this birth defect

Standard of Care

FAS/E: A Standard of Care is a booklet of practical interventions that have been proven successful by parents raising children with FAS/E. These interventions were gathered and documented from these parents at an FAS/E Intervention Retreat in November, 1997. Each of the four age groups of individuals with FAS/E are addressed: toddlers, children, adolescents and adults. Within each age group, interventions are categorized by the major areas of challenge identified by the parents. Suggested donation: $10.00 ($13.00 Canadian)

Cheers, Here's to the Baby

"Cheers! Here's to the Baby" A birth mother's discovery of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, has been published and is being released at the FAS Interventions conference in Tacoma.
Back Cover: Linda laFever is the birth mother of Danny, who was the first March of Dimes poster child to represent the birth defect, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Linda and Dan have participated in numerous scientific research studies on the effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. This book reveals the struggles and heartbreaks of a loving single mother who unknowingly made a terrible mistake that forever altered the potential of her youngest son. Danny, now a young adult, was diagnosed when her was five years old. After Linda's recovery from the initial shock of her son's diagnosis, she devoted her life to providing for Danny and advocating for appropriate services for his unique needs. In doing so, she discovered that it was necessary to educate Danny's teachers and other service providers about his birth defect. She was courageous enough to do this, even though his disability was the direct result of her alcohol consumption during pregnancy. In the formal seminars she subsequently developed, she interprets and identifies the specific needs and perspectives of the birth families to foster and adoptive parents and professionals and to service providers. Because Linda's heart is tender, she is a beloved presenter on these issues and is open to comforting and encouraging other birth mothers of children with FAS and related conditions.
Suggested Donation: $15.00 (US Funds)

FAS*FRI Publications
PO Box 2525
Lynnwood WA. 98036