Why Families?

P4P’s approach is based on the insight that when it comes to preventing and addressing extremism, families and the larger community can be on the same page. This is because:

• Extremist movements do not just harm the communities they scapegoat. They also affect the very individuals involved in those movements, along with their families and immediate communities.
• Families are often the first to notice the troubling changes in a loved one undergoing radicalization.

However, on their own, few families would call the police on their loved ones — even when there is a risk of violence.[i]

And yet, with more awareness about radicalization as a human problem, what it is, where it could lead to, and given practical advice about how to address it families can become our best allies against extremism – even to the point of voluntarily calling the police when they have to.

P4P’s confidential helpline invites families to seek help for the individuals of concern before there’s a crisis. In our indirect interventions, during many sessions spanning months, P4P interventionist teams build a trusting relationship with the family, with the goal of:

• Improving their self-efficacy, changing their posture from helplessness to active engagement (e.g., inviting them to education support groups involving our programs’ veteran families).
• Understanding and addressing the dynamics or grievances contributing to the radicalization.
• Helping them with practical steps to rebuild their connections with the individual of concern (through active listening, shared activities, or exercises aimed at helping them navigate challenging to listen to ideological rants).
• Laying the groundwork for our direct interventions with the individual of concern
• Encouraging and guiding the family to seek additional resources to address secondary issues (e.g. mental health, substance abuse, housing assistance)

Our intervention teams consist of Exit Interventionists with backgrounds in psychotherapy, psychology, social work, and running crisis hotlines. They are joined by Exit Peer Specialists — individuals who have long since left extremist movements, reintegrated into mainstream society, and have undergone training to provide peer support. The intervention teams leverage their expertise and experience to build trust and offer hope to struggling families and individuals. 

[i] Eisenman, D. P., Weine, S., Thomas, P., Grossman, M., Porter, N., Shah, N. D., … Fernandes, M. (2023). Obstacles and facilitators to intimate bystanders reporting violent extremism or targeted violence. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 16(4), 672–699. https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2023.2269011