Parenting Support

Families will require support when faced with problems they are unable to overcome on their own. Ideally support should come from existing networks, such as extended family, religious leaders, and neighbours. Where such support is not available or sufficient, additional family and community services are required. Such services are particularly important for kinship, foster and adoptive caretakers, and child headed households in order to prevent separation and address abuse and exploitation of children. It is also vital for children affected by HIV/AIDS and armed conflict, and those children living on the street.

Parenting support services are typically provided by social and community paraprofessionals. They focus on the individual needs of a child or family, in order to address and overcome issues which may lead to family separation or harm to the child. Such services should be provided within the context of case planning, beginning with an assessment of the child and family situation. By assessing the need first, an appropriate set of services can be offered, such as day care provision, parenting support, household economic strengthening, or psychosocial referral.

Day care services are particularly important for caretakers who are overwhelmed as a result of ill health, cannot provide adaquate care because they need to work, or who are isolated within the community. It provides an excellent opportunity for children to socialise with others, and can offer additional protection and education.

Parenting support provides caretakers with an opportunity to talk about their difficulties, and learn additional techniques for meeting their child’s developmental and relationship needs. It can enable caretakers to cope with behavioural problems, and address abusive parenting techniques, thereby reducing the need for family separation and improving the incidence of successful family reunification.

The literature in this section contains information on family support programmes for vulnerable children, including day care and parenting support.

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The New Zealand Family Group Conference Confidentiality Protections: Lessons Learned and an Application in U.S. Child Welfare Systems

Lisa Merkel‐Holguin, Allan Cooke, Denise Evans, Kelly L. Beck - Family Court Review, 27 Jan 2020

This article provides a historical context and describes numerous provisions of the family group conference that protect participants and the proceedings. It then describes applications of FGC‐like approaches in the United States where practice models and policies—not laws—guide the implementation of such approaches.

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Families who recurrently lose children into care: How can professionals support mothers?

Belinda Hannah, Louise Condon - Journal of Health Visiting, 25 Jan 2020

This article identifies the steps that can be taken to support women at risk of recurrently losing children to care.

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Positive Parenting in Foster Care: Testing the Effectiveness of a Video-feedback Intervention Program on Foster Parents’ Behavior and Attitudes

Nikita K. Schoemaker, et al - Children and Youth Services Review, 22 Jan 2020

The current randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline in Foster Care (VIPP-FC) on parenting behavior and attitudes in foster parents.

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Parental stress and parenting in Chinese immigrant families: The mediating role of social support

Shu‐Wen Liu, Fuhua Zhai, Qin Gao - Child & Family Social Work, 21 Jan 2020

This study investigated whether parental stress was associated with parenting and whether this relationship was mediated by social support in a sample of 255 Chinese immigrant parents from the Survey of Asian American Families in New York City.

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Parental-group interventions for parents of children with mental health problems admitted in a tertiary care center: An experience from India

N Janardhana, B Manjula - Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 14 Jan 2020

The objective of this study is to understand the use of parental-group intervention for helping parents understand the problems of their children and to develop skills to deal with those problems.

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Factors that predict child welfare caseworker referrals to an evidence-based parenting program

Christina Myers, Antonio Garcia, Rinad Beidas, Zixiaojie Yang - Children and Youth Services Review, 07 Jan 2020

This study examined whether caseworker demographic factors, attitudes towards evidence-based practices (EBPs) and organizational factors predict caseworker referrals. Relying upon tenets of the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study also examined whether intention to refer predicts caseworker referrals to an EBP.

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Parenting challenges of African immigrants in Alberta, Canada

Bukola Salami, Dominic A. Alaazi, Philomina Okeke‐Ihejirika, Sophie Yohani, Helen Vallianatos, Brittany Tetreault, Christina Nsaliwa - Child & Family Social Work, 02 Jan 2020

In this paper, the authors report the results of a study examining parenting challenges among a sample of African immigrant parents in Alberta, Canada.

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State Investments in Head Start to Support At-Risk Children and Families: More Important Than Ever

National Head Start Association, 2020

This brief from Head Start provides an overview of state funding for Head Start, a collection of comprehensive birth to five programs in the U.S. specifically designed to strengthen families, promote school readiness, and improve child health.

Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting

Patrick Premand & Oumar Barry - The World Bank, 2020

This paper disentangles the effects of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor households through an experiment embedded in a government program in Niger.

Three Trimesters to Three Years: Promoting Early Development

The Future of Children - Princeton-Brookings, 2020

This issue of the Future of Children focuses on the first years of life starting with in utero experiences.