"I Am More Than My Past": Parents' Attitudes and Perceptions of the Positive Parenting Program in Child Welfare

Background: To achieve safety, permanency, and well-being, CW leaders in two agencies in a large-Mid-Atlantic City received funding to implement the Positive Parenting Program (TripleP). While inner and outer contextual barriers of implementing evidence supported parenting interventions (ESPIs) in Child Welfare (CW) have been illuminated by caseworkers and therapists (Aarons et al., 2011), much less is known about how parents perceive these contexts as clients of CW agencies, and if and how they overcome barriers to engagement in ESPIs. To that end, these questions were addressed: (1) What inner and outer contextual factors influence engagement in TripleP among CW involved parents?, and (2) To what extent do parents believe TripleP is effective in promoting positive parent-child interactions.

Methods: Thirty-five parents who graduated from or who were near completing TripleP participated in one of four focus groups. Most of the parents who were between 20-49 years old (µ=34.21) identified as female (n=24). Nearly 75% of the sample identified as African American (n=26) while the remaining parents identified either as Caucasian (n=5), Latina (n=2), or Other (n=2). Half of the 49 children potentially impacted by TripleP (µ =6.67 years) were placed in kinship care (n=24), while the remaining were placed in foster care (n=15), with parents (n=8), or other settings (n=2).  Focus groups were 45-90 minutes long and audio recorded, transcribed, and reviewed for accuracy. Following the procedures outlined by Strauss and Corbin (1990), themes were generated by relying upon Grounded Theory methods: labeling phenomena (open coding), identifying significant codes (focused coding) and making connections between categories, thereby generating themes to emerging analysis (axial coding).

Results: Categories within the first theme “barriers of engagement” included lack of immediate acceptability or intrinsic motivation, multiple demands, limited time and visitation privileges with children to practice new skills, and inadequate assessments by caseworkers who were often unprepared to provide Triple-P progress reports during permanency hearings. The parents overcame barriers (theme two) due to TripleP providers’ ability to cultivate positive therapeutic alliances by praising progress, adapting case studies for applicability, and facilitating bonds between peers. Consequently, the parents illuminated the effects of engagement (theme three): confidence to engage in positive talk with children, increased insight of previous negative parenting behaviors, and recognition of positive and prosocial child behaviors. 

Conclusions: Based on the results, it is theorized that while the inner context (individual adopter characteristics and behaviors) was conducive to (1) addressing barriers to engagement in TripleP, and (2) endorsing positive outcomes, the outer context (intra-organizational relationships and collaboration between parenting, child welfare, and court systems) may need to be modified to facilitate buy-in earlier in the implementation process. Findings underscore the need to modify the inner context by training facilitators to simultaneously balance and embrace rapport building, fidelity, and flexibility of innovation. Adequate time should be devoted to facilitating bonds between parents and facilitators and drawing from parents’ stories rather than regimented case studies. Future research should validate findings in other agency contexts, and with attention to other ESPIs that are implemented in the CWS.