Can Training Change the Knowledge and Attitudes of Social Services Providers about Working with Disabled Parents? a Pretest-Posttest Study

Background: As disabled parents are disproportionately referred to child protection by social service providers and their children are disproportionately removed from their homes, it is vital that social workers and other social service providers be trained in working with disabled parents. Unfortunately, there is little training provided to social service providers on working with people with disabilities in general, and even less on disabled parents. The purpose of this research project was to develop and test the effectiveness of a one-time training aimed at social service providers on core concepts on working with disabled parents. This is the first social work study examining training effectiveness related to disabled parents.

Methods: A training curriculum was developed based on input from an expert panel of disabled parents, national experts, researchers, and advocates, as well as current research. Using a pretest-posttest design, a 90-minute training was tested with 113 social service providers who attended a training at four sites in one state in the summer of 2024. The survey included items related to knowledge and attitudes about working with disabled parents, as well participants’ assessment of their ability to work with disabled parents. These were all analyzed using paired t-tests. We also coded open-ended questions about “key concerns” when working with disabled parents using thematic analysis.

Results: We found large and significant changes in participants’ confidence in their knowledge about core concepts in working with disabled parents, including parental supports, “good enough” parenting, and biases. For example, the participants’ knowledge of “parental supports” changed from a mean of 3.3 (scale of 1-7, 7 being strongly agree) (SD= 1.75) before the training to a mean of 5.45 (SD=1.20) (t=11.754, p=.0001) after the training. Participant’ attitudes towards disabled parents also showed significance difference after the training. On the pretest, participants had a mean of 5.75 (SD=1.47) on their views of the likely parenting ability of disabled parents, while in the posttest this rose to a mean of 6.43 (SD=1.09)(t=4.273, p=.0001). There were significant differences in participants’ assessment of their ability to work with disabled parents. The largest change was in participants’ confidence in providing parental supports, with a mean score of 4.60 (SD=1.67) before the training, and 5.98 (SD=1.08) (t=10.704)(p=.0001) after the training, and there were also improvements in their assessment of their ability to use a strengths-based approach, access information, and provide tailored accommodations. The participants’ top concerns in working with disabled parents also changed. Before the training, the participants’ top concerns mostly focused on individual deficits of parents, such as their mental capacity or presumed inability to parent, while after the training the top concerns were lack of resources, discrimination and bias, and knowledge regarding accommodations.

Conclusion: While a single training does not typically significantly change behaviors, professionals attending this training had at least temporary large and significant shifts in their knowledge and attitudes about disabled parents. Disseminating this type of training broadly could be a step forward in leading transformative change in providing socially just social services to disabled parents.