Support for parents
Given the importance of parental skills in children's development and the fact that optimal parenting practices are not necessarily innate, a large number of programs exist to help parents improve their parenting. Some programs are intended for all parents and children, while others target specific groups, such as single mothers, low-income families or parents of children with developmental problems.
“Parent support programs do not share a uniform intervention, but they do have a common goal - to improve the lives of children - and a shared strategy - to affect children by creating changes in parents' attitudes, knowledge and/or behaviour”, explains Barbara Dillon Goodson, of Abt Associates Inc., USA. Parent-support programs seek to influence children's outcomes by motivating changes in parents through a variety of supports, including case management that links families with services, education on child development and parenting practices, and social support through relationships with service staff and other parents.
“The challenge for Canadian health and social-service providers”, says Jane Drummond, from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Nursing, “is to promote optimal parenting, but in a proactive and cost-effective manner.” The barriers are numerous: service fragmentation, narrowness of mandate, power differential created by provider expertise, and access difficulties because of location, language or hours of availability. “Because the issues facing vulnerable families are rooted in an array of social, economic and political conditions that extend beyond the control of one service sector, government and community systems must collaborate to coordinate programs”, she states.
Effective programs
Despite the scarcity of large-sample studies or randomized control trials measuring the effects of parenting programs on child development outcomes, researchers have identified some characteristics of successful programs.
Carol M. Trivette and Carl J. Dunst of the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, USA, advocate a family-centred approach. “Research demonstrates that when community-based parent support programs provide a variety of parenting guidance and support options in a family-centred manner, parents' confidence and competence is enhanced, and parents are more likely to interact with their children in ways that promote the children's social and emotional development.”
Other research shows that programs combining work with parents and early childhood education have larger-than average effects on both parents and children.
Targeting specific needs
Goodson also found that more successful programs targeted children with a specific need that had been identified by the parents, used professional rather than paraprofessional staff, and provided opportunities for parents to meet together and provide peer support.
Similarly, Shaw found that effective programs address specific types of child behaviour (e.g. developmental disabilities or child conduct problems) or target specific developmental transitions. They cover multiple parenting factors, such as consistent caregiving in preschool or daycare and maternal well-being. They devote enormous efforts to the initial training of staff and to maintaining the quality of the intervention over time.
For children with behaviour problems, Robert J. McMahon of the University of Washington advocates “parent training” programs, in which parents meet with a therapist who teaches them to use specific procedures to alter their child's behaviour at home.
And for sceptics who might question the costs of parenting programs, he gives the dollar facts. “An economic analysis of the costs and benefits of several intervention strategies indicated that parent training was more cost-effective in preventing later crime than home visiting plus day care or supervision of delinquents”, McMahon concludes. Being a parent is never easy; programs to help parents are therefore essential. When parents are knowledgeable about child development and have access to professional and peer support, their parenting skills and behaviours are enhanced. And because parent-child interactions have a lasting effect on children's social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive development, better parenting can only mean healthier, happier children.
This article is a publication from the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development.
