Parent-CHILD Relationships in a Homeless Shelter: Promoting PLAY

Background: Since 2008 the number of homeless families has been on the rise. Homelessness presents threats to longevity in the form of violence, poor health, mental illness, high stress and developmental delays for children. Programs are needed that foster secure attachments and effective stress coping for families living in shelters. Effective programs facilitate parent-child play. The Filial Play Therapy model, developed in the 1960’s, offers a standardized, evidence-based intervention that promotes positive parent-child attachment and decreases stress for both parent and child. Filial Playhas been successfully implemented with single-parent, highly stressed and ethnically diverse families. However, this evidence-based, intervention was not previously studied in a shelter setting.

This study examined the efficacy of implementing the Filial Play Therapy model in a homeless shelter and posed two research questions: 1) Will parents with preschool children who are living in a homeless shelter improve their interactions with their child if they participate in the Filial Play Therapy project, and 2) Will parents with preschool age children who are living in a homeless shelter reduce their feelings of stress if they participate in the Filial Play Therapy project?

Methods: Two, early childhood, experts implemented The Filial Play intervention. The seven-week, play-group used the CPRT curriculum. Each two-hour session included parent training, skill building, parent-child play, reflection, sharing, practice review, and video observations. The average number of sessions attended was 3.6 (SD=1.79).

Sample: The six parent-child dyads were people of color ranging in age from 24-29. Each family included two to seven children. The focus child ranged from age one year and eleven months to six years and five months.

Measurement: A baseline measure of parenting stress and parent-child interactions was conducted just prior to the implementation of the parent-child play-group intervention. Parent-child interactions were measured by the Measurement of Empathy in Adult-Child interactions Scale (MEACI). This twenty-minute video of parent-child play measures parent communication of acceptance, parent allowance of child self-direction, parent-child involvement and the ability of caregivers to demonstrate empathy during adult-child play sessions. Parent stress coping was measured by the Parenting Stress Index (PSI-4-SF). The PSI-4-SF is a 36-item standardized assessment that measures parental distress, parent-child interaction and child difficulties.

Results: The Total Stress, mean baseline percentile rating on the PSI-4-SF was 79, which is within the normal range. Three of the six participant scores indicated above normal parenting stress. At baseline five of the six participants scored below the median on the MEACI: Total Empathy Score, indicating that generally participants demonstrated empathy for their child’s feelings and communicated this during the play session.

            Conclusions and Implications: Research observations indicated that the Filial Play Therapy model can effectively be implemented in a shelter setting with some adjustments. Further research is needed to understand the best approach to delivery and the overall impact of the intervention. Facilitating an evidence-based support group for parents of young children offers a promising social work intervention strategy for very stressed families. Implementation of a manualized curriculum suggests a low cost option for supporting homeless families.