Accentuating the Positive to Prevent the Negative Capacity-Building Child Maltreatment Prevention

1. Accentuating the Positive to Prevent the Negative Capacity-Building Child Maltreatment Prevention Carol M. Trivette, Ph.D. Carl J. Dunst, Ph.D. Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute Morganton and Asheville, NC Presentation made at the 17th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect Atlanta, Georgia, April 1, 2009

2. Purpose of Presentation • Describe Capacity-Building Model • Review of Capacity-Building Studies • Identify and Highlight the Key Characteristics of Capacity-Building Practices

3. Paradigms and Intervention Models

4. Characteristics of the Capacity-Building Paradigm

5. Parent and Child Everyday Activities Parent’s Strengths (Interests & Abilities) Needs-Based (Responsive) Practices Program Supports and Opportunities Figure 1. Operational components for implementing the parenting practices that strengthen the parent/child relationship.

6. Strengths-Based and Child Maltreatment Studies • Project ASSIST • Project KEEPSAFE • Child Neglect Study • Project PAL • Project ABLE

7. Project ASSIST Purpose • Applied research project designed to prevent child maltreatment among teenage mothers (Dunst et al., 1989, Dunst, 1989, Cooper et al., 1990).

8. Project ASSIST Project Component 1 • Teenage mothers did a work study program in preschool classrooms designed to provide them opportunities to observe and learn positive parenting behaviors.

9. Project ASSIST Project Component 2 • A needs-based social support intervention assigned to promote teenage mothers’ procurement of social supports and resources to meet needs.

10. Project ASSIST Project Component 3 • Parenting classes that addressed teenage mothers’ concerns about child-rearing.

11. Project ASSIST Premise of the Work-Study Component • Poor parenting was not simply a function of being a teenage mother but the lack of opportunity to have good role models.

12. Project ASSIST Results of Work-Study Component • Independent observations of mothers interacting with their children found that often just with 12 to 15 two-hour, twice a week work-study sessions, teenage mothers increased their use of positive parenting behavior and decreased the use of negative parenting behavior.

13. Project ASSIST Premise of Social Support Interventions • Guided by family systems model (Dunst, Trivette & Deal, 1988) and focused on teen mothers’ identification of their needs and the needs of their children. • Teens acquiring the skills needed to obtain supports and resources. • Staff use of empowering helpgiving practices to support and strengthen teenage mothers’ capacities.

14. Project ASSIST Results of Social Support Intervention • Major improvements in teenage mothers’ self-efficacy about their abilities to obtain needed resources and adult life outcomes (enrolling in college, finding a job, etc.).

15. Project KEEPSAFE Purpose • To prevent child maltreatment where children’s challenging behavior precipitated episodes of poor parent/child interactions (Trivette & Dunst, 1987).

16. Project KEEPSAFE Premise • Children with disabilities often manifest challenging behavior that parents find frustrating and irritating, and this serves as an impetus for poor parenting.

17. Project KEEPSAFE Intervention Group • Parents were provided supports to acquire skills that emphasized positive child behavior.

18. Project KEEPSAFE Results • Parents in the skill-based group increased positive interactions with their children by recognizing and responding to positive child behavior characteristics, whereas parents in the other group showed no changes in their parenting styles.

19. Child Neglect Study • 650 pregnant women followed longitudinally from 2nd trimester until their children were 2 years of age. • Child Well-Being Scales assessed presence of different types of neglect along a continuum from neglect to extreme neglect.

20. Child Neglect Study Results • Lack of needed supports and resources taken at all measurement occasions was most strongly related to neglect, and that lack of supports and resources had negative effects on personal well-being and other personal functioning measures (e.g., self-efficacy beliefs) (Trivette, Dunst, & Hamby, 1996).

21. Project PAL Purpose • To strengthen parents’ judgments about their parenting capabilities as a way of improving parent-child interactions and decreasing the likelihood of maltreatment episodes (Dunst, 2001, 2008; Dunst, Bennis, Durant, & Shivers, 1999).

22. Project PAL • Parents were administered a strengths inventory and their personal interests and abilities were used to provide their children and other children in their neighborhoods different kinds of learning opportunities. The project was implemented in four neighborhoods in Asheville, NC judged to be at highest risk for a variety of poor outcomes (United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County, 1994a, 1994b).

23. Project PAL Results • Results showed differences favoring the intervention group participants on all outcome measures. Display of more positive and less negative behavior was found among the participants whose strengths were used as contexts for young children’s learning opportunities.

24. Project ABLE Purpose • Purpose of the project was to develop, implement, and evaluate methods and procedures for using parents’ strengths (interests and abilities) as sources of young children’s everyday, natural learning opportunities.

25. Project ABLE Participants • Participants were parents (mostly mothers) from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Asian, African-American, American Indian, Caucasian, Middle Eastern, Latino, Pacific Islander, etc.).

26. Project ABLE Intervention • Participants completed a strengths instrument that included more than 50 interests and abilities identified through a national survey of adult strengths. • Participants indicated, for each of the scale items, which things they liked to do and enjoyed doing (interests) and what things they were good at doing (abilities). • Participants were then asked to indicate for both their interests and abilities, which things their children might enjoy doing and which activities they wanted to do with their children. • Parents then selected 6 to 8 activities that they began to routinely do with their children throughout the week.

27. Project ABLE • Staff worked with parents for 20 weeks • Reviewed which activities worked for parent and child • Added or deleted activities • Intervention purposely simple

28. Project ABLE Results • Preliminary results indicate that the intervention group participants (compared to the control group participants): (1) Identified themselves as having more strengths at the end of the intervention, (2) engaged in more strengths-based interactions with their children, (3) reported more positive interactions with their children, (4) the children displayed more positive child behavior, and (5) the children demonstrated greater developmental progress over time (Dunst, Masiello et al., 2009a).

29. How Matters As Much As What • The ways in which interventions are conceptualized matter a great deal in terms of the practices that are used to affect changes in parent, family, and child behavior and functioning. • The ways in which practitioners intervene and interact with families also matter a great deal if participants optimally benefit from the interventions.

30. Lessons Learned • People responded more favorably to interventions that emphasized the good things people do rather than just the correction of poor functioning. • The more the interventions fit with the ways people typically and routinely “go about” everyday life, the higher the probability that the intervention practices would be used and implemented.

31. References Dunst, C. J. (2001). Parent and community assets as sources of young children's learning opportunities. Asheville, NC: Winterberry Press. Dunst, C. J. (1989, January). Accessing social support and intervention services by teenage mothers (Project ASSIST): Final report. Asheville, NC: Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute. Dunst, C. J. (2001). Parent and community assets as sources of young children's learning opportunities. Asheville, NC: Winterberry Press. Dunst, C. J., Bennis, L. A., Durant, V., & Shivers, S. (1999, August). Project PAL: Parents accessing learning opportunities for their young children. Second year progress report. Asheville, NC: Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute. Dunst, C. J., Trivette, C. M., & Deal, A. (1988). Enabling and empowering families: Principles and guidelines for practice. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books. Dunst, C. J., Vance, S., & Hamby, D. W. (1989). Supporting and strengthening pregnant teenagers and adolescent mothers: Principles, strategies and outcomes. Family Systems Intervention Monograph Series, 1(2). Trivette, C. M., & Dunst, C. J. (1987). Proactive influences of social support in families of handicapped children. In H. G. Lingren, L. Kimmons, P. Lee, G. Rowe, L. Rottmann, L. Schwab, & R. Williams (Eds.), Family strengths: Vol. 8-9. Pathways to well-being (pp. 391-405). Lincoln: University of Nebraska, Center for Family Strengths. Trivette, C. M., Dunst, C. J., & Hamby, D. W. (1996). Social support and coping in families of children at risk for developmental disabilities. In M. Brambring, H. Rauh, & A. Beelmann (Eds.), Early childhood intervention: Theory, evaluation and practice (pp. 234-264). Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter. United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County. (1994). Challenges in Buncombe County: The 1994 needs assessment report. Asheville, NC: Author. United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County. (1994). A closer look . . . at risk communities. Asheville, NC: Author.

32. Carol M. Trivette, Ph.D. Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute 128 S. Sterling Street Morganton, NC 28655 828/432-0065 (p) 828/432-0068 (f) Email: trivette@puckett.org Website: www.puckett.org Website: www.wbpress.com