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Homeless Parents: Parenting Education to Prevent Abusive Behaviors
Author(s) -
Gorzka Patricia A.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of child and adolescent psychiatric nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.331
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1744-6171
pISSN - 1073-6077
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6171.1999.tb00053.x
Subject(s) - psychology , intervention (counseling) , descriptive statistics , statistic , clinical psychology , child abuse , developmental psychology , injury prevention , medicine , poison control , psychiatry , medical emergency , statistics , mathematics
PROBLEM. This study sought to measure the efects of a short‐term parenting course for homeless parents to decrease their parenting stress and potential for abusive parenting behaviors. SAMPLE. Nineteen homeless parents lived in a family emergency shelter for homeless families in Hillsborough County, FL. Their average length ofshelter stay was 3 weeks. METHODS. Residents were invited to participate in a parenting education course consisting of three 1‐hour classes weekly for 3 consecutive weeks. Class content focused on the parent, the child, and discipline. Subjects' potential for child abuse was measured with the Adult Adolescent Parenting Invent0 y and their parenting stress with the Parenting Stress Index. A quasi‐experimental prelposttest design was used, with a t test statistic at the .05 level of significance. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze selected demographic data. FINDINGS. Results revealed significant difuences in the scores of parenting stress originating from the child domain of the PSI and in the scores on the construct of unrealistic expectations of the child in the M I . Both scores had decreased on the posttest. CONCLUSIONS. Short‐term parenting education courses may be a useful intervention strategy.