Child health and well-being are intrinsically important and also contribute to a healthy, productive adolescence and adulthood. Parents can play an important role in helping their children acquire or strengthen the behaviors, skills, attitudes, and motivation that promote physical and mental health and overall well-being in childhood, adolescence and well into their adulthood. Acknowledging this, a variety of programs and interventions engage parents in efforts to achieve one or more outcomes for their children: academic achievement and attendance; a reduction in internalizing behaviours such…
This Best Practices Tool-Kit aims to systematically identify empirical evidence regarding prison programs and practices for incarcerated parents and their children. It highlights several practices and program strategies that are proven, promising or exemplary best practices and provides references for more extensive reading, if desired. The objective of the tool kit is to offer a sound evidence base that will better inform policymakers, practitioners and researchers on prison programs and practices geared toward building the parental skills of incarcerated parents. (Author abstract)
This action plan reviews both federal and state barriers to identifying and serving children of incarcerated parents, and offers policy recommendations for the U.S. Congress and the Administration. The action plan is designed to help federal leaders improve policies for children of incarcerated parents, but also includes recommendations of value to states and local governments that can facilitate and complement federal initiatives and result in better responses to this population. (Author abstract)
This guidebook describes the steps and best practices for successfully selecting and implementing a parenting intervention. The purpose is to provide program, state, and child care network leaders an easy-to-use tool for implementing a parenting intervention. The guidebook may be used as a companion to the Compendium of Parenting Interventions recently developed by the Health and Human Services Interagency Parenting Group and the Head Start National Center on Family and Community Engagement for use across various community-based settings. The guidebook is organized according to four stages of…
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Many children experience adversity in the form of poverty, abuse or neglect, homelessness, or other conditions that make them vulnerable to the damaging effects of chronic stress. New research reveals that chronic stress alters their rapidly developing biological systems in ways that undermine their ability to succeed in school and in life. The good news is that we have strong evidence for programs and approaches that policy makers could use to help these children overcome the effects of stress. Home visitation and early childhood health care can give parents much-needed support and…
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This webpage describes the Family Networks Project, developed to assess the initial efficacy of Stepping Stones Triple P-Positive Parenting Program with parents of children below age two with developmental disabilities to strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment.
Current policy regarding child protection services places increasing demands for providers to engage fathers whose children are involved in the child protection process. This requisite brings to the fore the ongoing challenges that fathers have historically faced in working within these systems. Despite this need, there is little empirical evidence regarding the factors and strategies that impact the engagement of fathers in interventions relevant to child protection services. This comprehensive and systemic review synthesizes the available literature regarding factors and strategies that may…
Over 1.5 million children in this country currently have one or both of their parents incarcerated. In addition to the trauma of this loss, these children face tremendous uncertainty in their living arrangements, relationships with loved ones, and family financial stability. Short-term coping responses and heavy stigma are common, both of which may lead to long-term emotional and behavioral challenges. This report reviews the current research on children with incarcerated parents and offers recommendations on how to reduce the negative impact of parental incarceration, with particular…
The Parenting Education for Teen Family Life Skills Project was developed to provide a support and parenting education project for pregnant and parenting teenagers in the Oklahoma City-County area. Objectives were: to increase parental self-esteem; to increase social support; to increase knowledge of normal infant behavior; to increase participation in educational programs; to decrease the incidence of reported and confirmed child abuse and neglect; to decrease the incidence of unplanned pregnancy; and to decrease dependence on public financial assistance. Several components made up the…
This final report summarizes the results of an NCCAN-funded project designed to reduce child abuse and neglect among families with adolescent parents. The project consisted of group parenting education programs; peer supports; in-home intensive services when needed; and educational and support services for fathers. An evaluation of the program found that long-term, open-ended group intervention was more effective than a 12-week didactic group model. Recommendations include using a naturalistic evaluation instrument to assess the impact of the program on parent-child interactions and targeting…
