Nonviolent resistance: a treatment for parents of children with acute behavior problems

Nonviolent resistance (NVR) is a new training model aimed at helping parents deal effectively with their helplessness, isolation, and escalatory interactions with their children. The purpose of this study is to evaluate training in NVR with the parents of children with acute behavior problems. Seventy-three parents (41 families) were randomly assigned to a treatment group and wait-list control group. Measures were taken at pretreatment, posttreatment, and a 1-month follow-up. In comparison with the wait-list group, parents who received training in NVR showed a decrease in parental helplessness and escalatory behaviors, and an increase in perceived social support. The children's negative behaviors as assessed by the parents also decreased significantly.     

Preparing parents for children with special needs: A three-part approach

This paper describes a community-based educative-small group method for working with prospective foster and adoptive parents. As an educational approach, the program prepares applicants to be substitute parents. The small group process method provides the applicants with an atmosphere conducive to discussing fears and frustrations while gaining peer and professional support. Community-centeredness not only allows the agency to recruit much-needed minority parents, but to make a contribution to the community in the form of prevention of problems through availability and education. Evaluation of the program demonstrates that the combined communitybased, small group approach is an effective and efficient method for “screening-in” foster and adoptive parents for children with special needs.     

Helping parents decide on ADHD treatment for their children

In the United States, medication is often the first intervention used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet psychosocial interventions with both parents and teachers working together to shape the child's behavior can also be an effective approach, enabling smaller amounts of medication to be used with fewer side effects. An overview of behavioral interventions is provided with a focus on parent training in child behavior management and teacher training in classroom management. Key nursing interventions on behalf of children with ADHD include assessing parental knowledge about treatment, listening supportively to parents, and promoting partnerships among parents, teachers, and providers.     

Trauma-informed services for children with incarcerated parents

Children of incarcerated parents have often experienced not only the trauma of family separation, but also other forms of adverse events. Social workers can improve service delivery to this population by incorporating SAMHSA’s components of trauma-informed care (TIC). Translating TIC concepts into practice is an important but challenging goal for social work practitioners. The first half of this article reviews the literature about the effects of parental incarceration on attachment, stigma, physical and mental health, and intergenerational transmission of trauma. The latter half of the article applies principles of TIC by offering specific recommendations for conceptualizing cases through the lens of trauma and utilizing trauma-informed responses with these children.     

Adoptive parents to children with severe developmental disabilities: A profile

A sample of 16 women and men who accompanied their adopted children with severe developmental disabilities to a medical appointment at Henry Ford Hospital's Multidisciplinary Care Clinic during the one-year period beginning July 1, 1988 are described in the context of their parental role vis-a-vis these children. Results of the study are presented through use of a six-part organizational scheme: demographic and social traits of the parents and their adopted children, the adopted children in family context, life satisfactions of the parents, adoption motives, adoption satisfactions, and humanization of the children.     

Recruiting adoptive parents for children with developmental disabilities

One agency describes a systematic approach to recruitment of prospective adoptive families for children with developmental disabilities. The recruitment methodology, preliminary conclusions, and implications for future recruitment of families are presented.     

Involving parents in the treatment of behaviorally disordered children

Effective psychiatric treatment for children requires the active participation of the children's parents. This paper describes a training model that has been applied successfully to diverse groups of parents of hospitalized children. Lecture, role-playing, and other techniques are used to help parents implement social learning concepts with their children. Applications range from the judicious use of praise to elaborate contingency management systems, depending upon the abilities and needs of the parents. The authors argue that this model has wide applicability and is especially amenable to an outpatient setting.     

Advocating for children of separating parents

This article draws upon the author's lay experiences of helping two sets of divorcing parents to retain contact and meaningful relationships between their young children and their non-resident fathers. It argues that the failure to take account of past parenting practices in divorce proceedings, to grant children party status and to make independent representation available to them, and to offer child-centred services to help parents to practise shared parenting post-separation, may contribute to the widespread loss of contact between children and their non-resident parents, particularly fathers. The Family Law Act 1996 promises little change.     

Elderly parents with handicapped children: Anticipating the future

This article concerns elderly people as providers rather than as recipients of care. Case study and survey data are used to illustrate the part elderly parents play in supporting children with handicaps, to identify the interdependencies that develop between them, and to account for the varied long-term strategies for care that they adopt.     

Perceived social support in Chinese parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a Chinese context: Implications for social work practice

This article reports the results of a Hong Kong study (no. of parents = 121) which identified perceived social support (PSS), both overall and four types of support, of Chinese parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and examined the impact of PSS on the interrelationship between the ADHD symptoms and parenting stress. The parents perceived support of their primary social network as more satisfactory than professionals’. Parenting stress of the high PSS group was lower than the low PSS group’s. The PSS-overall, parenting role, and the ADHD symptoms explained a significant variance of parenting stress. The results pave the way to develop a complex social work model in helping.     

Disabled yet intact: Guidelines for work with congenitally physically disabled youngsters and their parents

This paper presents the viewpoint that congenitally physically children, having never been nondisabled, may experience themselves disabled yet intact, with the disability an integral part of their identity. However, society, with its pervasively negative attitudes toward disability, perceives disabled people as incomplete, defective, and deviant. Hence, congenitally disabled children face the difficult dilemma of integrating these two divergent views of themselves. Parents and professionals are offered guidelines to facilitate the resolution of this dilemma; however, they must first carefully scrutinize their own attitudes toward disability so that these do not unwittingly impede the parenting and treatment processes.Harilyn Rousso is director, Disabilities Unlimited, Counseling and Consultative Services; consultant on women and disability, YWCA of N.Y.C.; chairperson, Association of Mental Health Practitioners with Disabilities.     

Unacceptable forms of work: A multidimensional model

Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identified as an “area of critical importance” for the ILO as it approaches its centenary. Yet there is currently no comprehensive elaboration of the dimensions, causes or manifestations of UFW. This article reports on a research project that has proposed such a framework. The article first investigates and reconceptualizes key discourses on contemporary work to identify their contribution to an analytically rigorous conception of UFW. It then outlines a novel Multidimensional Model that has been designed for use by local policy actors in identifying and targeting UFW in countries across a range of income levels.     

A model for training foster parents in behavior modificiation techniques

A training program for foster parents applying the techniques of behavior modification produced measurable gains in parenting and in the management of the children.     

Motives for sharing illness experiences on Twitter: conversations of parents with children diagnosed with cancer

A patient- and family-centred approach in paediatric health care is important because parents are involved in making key decisions about their child’s health care and advocating for the best interest of the child. Parents and family members are increasingly turning to the internet to find and actively share information about their child’s health care. Twitter is one of many online platforms used by parents of children diagnosed with cancer to share information related to their child’s cancer experience. Existing research suggests that there is a need to better understand the motives for using Twitter for sharing content about a child’s cancer experience. Furthermore, there is a lack of theoretical frameworks for characterizing those motives. In this paper, we identify key themes of tweets posted by parents of children diagnosed with cancer and align those themes with motives inspired by the well-studied Everyday Life Information Seeking framework. We propose a new motive in addition to those associated with the framework and suggest that information can be shared for endogenous reasons as well as to meet the needs of others. This paper contributes an increased understanding of motives for sharing information about a child’s cancer journey and extends a theoretical framework for building further knowledge in this area.     

A Tandem Approach: Marriage Counseling as Process in Tandem with Individual Psychotherapy

More attention must be paid to the marriage and family unit in the mental health field (Haley, 1975), however, working exclusively with that unit and ascribing the cause of behavior solely to the interpersonal system would only perpetuate another kind of one-sidedness. This paper presents a tandem approach, a form of combined treatment, that maintains a balanced perspective of the individual and marriage and family unit, provides a synthesis for intrapsychic and interpersonal theories of the causation of behavior, integrates the techniques of the modalities of individual psychotherapy and marriage counseling, and expedites the solution of underlying intrapsychic and interpersonal problems     

A Lifeline in troubled waters: A support intervention for migrant farm workers

We implemented and evaluated a service delivery intervention (support model) to address the challenges faced by migrant agricultural workers in British Columbia, Canada. Three factors were identified that contributed to the effectiveness of the intervention: (1) face-to-face support and in-person outreach towards connection; (2) accounting migrant workers' hierarchy of needs and addressing their basic needs first towards comprehensiveness; and (3) role clarity and communication between partners involved in supporting this population towards coordination. A final factor, wider constraints, referred to the wider context of migrant workers' lives including their temporary status, tied work permits, and lack of access to rights. These wider constraints, which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, underscore that until greater policy action is taken to address these workers' precarious status, support services can only offer a lifeline in troubled waters.     

Family reunification efforts that work: A three year follow-up study of children in residential treatment

A three year follow-up study of children discharged from a residential treatment program was conducted to determine long-term family reunification rates. The primary interest was a comparison of families which had received different types of parent involvement programs during their child's placement. Results indicated that families which had received a combination of experiential and didactic involvement programs reunified at a significantly higher rate than did those receiving either program separately. Results are discussed with regard to the difficulties of achieving successful reunification for families with children in placement.     

Assessing parents with learning disabilities: The parental skills model

Definitions of what constitutes adequate or inadequate parenting continue to be unclear. Not surprisingly, professionals who are required to formulate opinions regarding parental competency often experience difficulties with this task. These difficulties are further compounded when the assessment involves parents with learning disabilities. They comprise a heterogeneous population many of whom have varying deficits and skills. The Parental Skills Model outlined in this paper is offered as a guide to professionals in their assessment of such parents. The model focuses on three primary areas which have been identified as crucial to parenting, namely, parents' life skills, familial history and access to support/resources. When difficulties are encountered by parents with learning disabilities in any of these three areas it appears to have a direct and indirect effect on the child's care and development. A model of good practice is proposed and illustrated with a case study.