Purpose Built Families Foundation

Purpose Built Families Foundation is a nationally accredited nonprofit delivering preventative and reparative services to overcome foundational barriers to the quest for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

Reparative services are delivered through (1) the agency’s Operation Sacred Trust (“OST”) collaboration disrupting and ending homelessness for thousands of Veterans and (2) Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills (“PAIRS”) classes offered nationwide under the “PAIRS Essentials” and “Warrior to Soul Mate” brands helping couples overcome marital instability.

Preventive services are delivered to youth  and adults - empowering interpersonal relationship competence through a triad of practical, usable skills to improve communication, conflict resolution, emotional understanding and connection.

Supportive Services for Veteran Families

Operation Sacred Trust (“OST”) was established in 2011 to end Veteran homelessness in South Florida. The OST collaboration began when South Florida was a primary hub of Veteran homelessness in the United States. Since 2011, OST has prevented and ended homelessness for thousands of very low-income Veterans in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

In 2018, Miami-Dade County became among the largest urban communities in the nation to achieve HUD benchmarks to declare an end to chronic Veteran homelessness.

Operation Sacred Trust is unique in that it combines proven traditional outreach and case management best practices with novel nontraditional service delivery methods. From inception, funding has been awarded by the Veterans Administration Supportive Services for Veteran Families program.

What is PAIRS?

The PAIRS semester-long program was first created in 1977 by Marriage and Family Therapist Lori Heyman Gordon as a graduate course for future counselors. The program evolved into the preeminent model of relationship skills education. Couples and families throughout the world have been impacted by PAIRS.

In PAIRS classes, a trained facilitator demonstrates and guides participants through exercises to develop a critical triad of practical, usable relationship boosting competencies: communications, conflict resolution, emotional understanding and connection.

Warrior to Soul Mate

Beginning in 2009, a grassroots effort began among U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs chaplains and social workers to incorporate PAIRS classes into the array of services available for couples impacted by post 9/11 deployments. The program became widely recognized as a modernized, highly cost-effective, time saving, customer service driven approach that advances VA’s most urgent priorities.

VA leaders saw that participation in what became known as “Warrior to Soul Mate” classes helped Veterans and their significant others better disrupt remarkably common underlying contributors to Veteran suicide, homelessness, and opioid abuse through increased capacity to create and sustain relationships with family, friends, and social supports.

By allowing and encouraging Veterans to include spouses, partners, and caregivers, in Warrior to Soul Mate training, Veteran families have been able to increase self-knowledge, develop their ability to maintain enjoyable intimate relationships, lower levels of anxiety and conflict, increase intimacy and affection, and improve relationship cohesion.

Customer Service reports have indicated greater than 99% of veterans who complete the 12- to 16-hour training recommend Warrior to Soul Mate.

An ROI analysis found that implementation of Warrior to Soul Mate had a significant, positive local budget impact, including a greater than 30% return on investment resulting from:

• Decreased emergency room days
• Decreased psychological visits
• Decreased chaplaincy visits
• Decreased medication costs
• Decreased inpatient psychiatric admits
• Decreased suicide flags

A 2019 White Paper published by the VA National Chaplaincy Center encouraged every VA Medical Center to rapidly adopt the program:

“Offering W2SM to every Veteran has the potential of dramatically improving levels of wellness and participation in managing their own healthcare for the cost of an education class. Building on the extensive history of development and incremental learning on how to execute the finest possible relationship program can provide benefits throughout the VA, especially: suicide prevention, family resiliency, and whole health. Staff participating in delivery of the program are universally proud of the results and are deeply invested in the program. “The costs are low, and the results
are dramatic.”