Despite advances in developing effective interventions for childhood mental health problems, significant gaps persist in families' access and use of mental health services. Barriers include lack of knowledge about service effectiveness, quality or availability, and distrust of professionals. To address these barriers, one member of our team (L. Bickman) developed a theory-based parent empowerment intervention to increase parents' self-efficacy in obtaining services for their children. This intervention--the sole controlled study testing empowerment methods in children's mental health--measured changes in perceptions of self-efficacy, not actual changes in behavior. Moreover, the model was tested on largely Caucasian, two-parent military families. Finally, the model did not fully engage parents as collaborators in developing and delivering the empowerment intervention. Studies by another member of our team (M. McKay et al.) have shown the effectiveness of collaborative engagement strategies in empowering families to actively partner with professionals to secure mental health services for children, especially in urban settings. This application seeks to join the previously successful but limited empowerment intervention of Bickman with the engagement methods of McKay to examine the impact of a newly developed Parent Empowerment Program on parent/caregivers' knowledge, skills, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior (service use). The pilot study will assess the impact of the empowerment program by randomly assigning 40 family support specialists to receive training in it or training as usually provided to them, and then to follow prospectively a random sample of caregivers of children with mental health problems who receive services from the specialists trained in the empowerment program or those who received usual training.
The specific aims are (1) to conduct a pilot test of the impact of parent empowerment vs. usual training on caregivers' knowledge, skills, attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior and thus generate effect size estimates; and (2) to pilot the feasibility of generating cost-related service use data. Outcomes for caregivers will be assessed at entry into services, bimonthly (for service use), and one year. Demonstrating the impact of a parent-designed and parent delivered service has significant promise for extending the reach of evidence-based practices and ultimately improving child and family outcomes. ? ?
| Olin, S Serene; Shen, Sa; Rodriguez, James et al. (2015) Parent Depression and Anger in Peer-Delivered Parent Support Services. J Child Fam Stud 24:3383-3395 |
| Olin, S Serene; Hoagwood, Kimberly E; Rodriguez, James et al. (2010) The Application of Behavior Change Theory to Family-Based Services: Improving Parent Empowerment in Children's Mental Health. J Child Fam Stud 19:462-470 |
| Olin, S Serene; Hoagwood, Kimberly E; Rodriguez, James et al. (2010) Impact of Empowerment Training on the Professional Work of Family Peer Advocates. Child Youth Serv Rev 32:1426-1429 |
