What is I-FAST?

Integrative Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) is a family-oriented treatment model which allows practitioners to flexibly utilize a variety of skills to address different mental health issues. Details of I-FAST:

• I-FAST incorporates a set of ideas and approaches based on identified factors that are common to most effective treatments.

• I-FAST is a meta-model developed with a strengths-based perspective and influenced by systems approach and social constructivism.

• Based on evidence-based common factors, I-FAST provides a meta-frame to integrate practice techniques such as therapeutic working alliance, interactional pattern shift, and system collaboration.

• I-FAST consists of systemic and clear practice phases and procedures to follow in the treatment process.

• Utilizing Strengths - I-FAST's Parallel Process of Empowerment: 

History of I-FAST:

• Begun in 2000

• Built through collaboration between community mental health agencies and universities

• Supported by the Ohio Department of Mental Health 2003-2007, Strong Family and Safe Community-Grant 2014-17

• Developed by:

  • J. Scott Fraser, PhD

  • David Grove, MSW, LISW-S

  • Mo Yee Lee, PhD

  • Gilbert J. Greene, PhD, LISW-S-IMPT

  • Andrew Solovey, MSW, LISW-S

Caritas Family Service & I-FAST

Caritas Family Service is the first agency in Hong Kong to obtain official certification in the use of I-FAST in 2015. Up to January 2025, there are 49 senior social workers and supervisors qualifying as I-FAST supervisors in the Service. The certification process represents a bold expansion of Caritas's commitment to the use of I-FAST throughout the agency.

List of Caritas Certified I-FAST Supervisors

Message from David Grove, one of the co-founders of I-FAST:

“Dr. Lee Mo Yee and I are both very pleased and impressed with the dedication of Caritas Family Service to the use of I-FAST as their overarching treatment model and we are both very pleased to continue to participate in the effort to further expand the use of I-FAST with Caritas Family Service.”

Why do we adopt I-FAST:

• In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for social work practitioners to use treatment approaches with effectiveness proven by research. I-FAST is one of the few prevailing evidence-based treatment models with accreditation in Hong Kong.

• Colleagues of Caritas Family Service have each practiced from different approaches and models.  We realize that colleagues strive to adopt approaches which are most effective to assist our clients.  We respect different approaches we have used and I-FAST offers a framework to embrace these differences. I-FAST aims to be a strengths-based treatment approach allowing practitioners to utilize their own perspectives and views while embracing broadly agreed upon components of existing effective treatments across different approaches.  It seeks to bridge the gap between approaches built on factors common to all effective treatment and those targeting more specific and active ingredients.

• As a certified I-FAST agency, we aim at providing ongoing training and clinical supervision to the colleagues so that their competency in casework intervention can be enhanced and the practice of I-FAST approach can be sustained.