Parent Centered Planning: Exploring the Potential Effectiveness of a Brief, Strengths-Based Intervention for Working with Parents with Disabilities

Background: Parents with disabilities often have extremely limited informal support networks and many have no access to accessible services that support their parenting. The purpose of this pilot study was to test the feasibility and potential effectiveness of a brief, strengths-based person-centered planning intervention for parents with disabilities called “Parent-Centered Planning (PCP).” PCP is an adaptation of the person-centered planning model, which is a goal-setting planning intervention used frequently to assist individuals with disabilities to identify and make progress towards their own goals in collaboration with their informal support networks. PCP aims to assist parents with disabilities in parental goal setting, increase parents’ connections with parenting services, and increase the size of parents’ informal support networks.

Methods: This study used a concurrent mixed-methods design. The sample included 13 parents with either an intellectual or developmental disability or physical disability who were caring for a child under the age of 18. We used a pretest/posttest design with an additional 3-month follow-up to measure our three aims, gathering data from our own progress notes and the administration of three scales that have been used frequently in research with people with disabilities: the Social Support Self Report (SSSR), the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ), and the Parental Stress Scale (PSS). We collected qualitative data through post-intervention interviews with participants and key support people as well as case notes to measure feasbility. We analyzed the quantitative data using paired t-tests to compare pretest and posttest means, and used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test when normality was not established. We analyzed our qualitative data using the directed content analysis approach, which is useful when researchers are seeking answers to specific questions.

Findings: We found the majority of participants (92%) took steps towards their self-identified goals, which fell into two categories: parenting goals and formal service goals. Parents increased the number of connections to formal service from pretest to posttest, with a mean of 3.25 (SD = 1.36) services at intake, and 3.83 at posttest (SD = 1.80), t(11) = -2.24, p < .05. While we found no statistically significant change in the number of informal supports on the SSSR from the pretest to posttest, our qualitative analysis showed that some participants eliminated unhealthy supports from their networks, resulting in smaller but more positive support networks. Parental stress total scores decreased on the PSS between pretest (M = 40.00, SD = 10.55) and posttest (M = 38.25, SD = 11.28), t(11)-2.28, p <.05. Our qualitative analysis uncovered several strengths of PCP: its professional facilitation, adaptability and flexibility, and brevity. Challenges were the limited services for parents with disabilities and difficulties with follow-through.

Discussion and Implications: We found that the PCP has potential effectiveness for improving access to services and supports for parents with disabilities, particularly increasing the number of services accessed by parents with disabilities and increasing parents’ satisfaction with their informal supports, and also decreased parental stress. This brief intervention for parents with disabilities is a low-cost, low-time commitment intervention that can be incorporated into existing services.