Parenting Skills for Adoptive Families: The development and evaluation of a parenting skills programme for adopters
The Parenting Skills for Adoptive Families Training Project was conceived in order to build upon the widely used Incredible Years parenting skills training programme- by Professor Carolyn Webster-Stratton, with particular additions and amendments tailored to meet the specific challenges faced by many adoptive families.
Prior to the project, parenting skills training programmes had proven effective for a range of difficulties when used with biological families. However, difficulties seem to differ in important ways between biological families and adoptive families.
In the light of the Adoption and Children Act (2002), and Adoption Support Services Regulations 2005, which now place a duty on local authorities to maintain a core set of adoption support services, the project has made a valuable contribution to developing and evaluating parenting skills for adopters.
Four parenting groups were run as part of the research from 2001 to 2004 at Coram Family with each course consisting of 12 two-hour meetings held every week. Each session began with a 'round-up' of how things had gone in the previous week for each family and a discussion of how they had found the 'homework' tasks that they were set each week. Then the material from the Webster-Stratton course was covered, with discussion and feedback from parents.
A researcher from the Anna Freud Centre sat in during the group sessions, taking notes of the discussions and highlighting issues that were raised by the parents that were not specifically addressed by the Incredible Years material, but which seemed pertinent to adoptive parenting.
Parents were also interviewed individually to ascertain their thoughts about the relevance of the material to their particular circumstances, and to gather ideas about possible additions to the course material.
In total, 35 parents were involved in the research, and these parents identified 36 'target' adopted children about whom they were concerned. Parents came from a range of backgrounds with the majority having no previous parenting experience.
Their children had ranged in age at the time of adoption from approximately six months to eight-years old, and had been with their parents for up to 10 years.
Almost two-thirds of the children had been adopted together with their biological sibling, presenting the parents with the additional and unique challenge of having to parent two newly placed children of different ages (and sometimes gender).
Material was developed to facilitate thinking about topics from an adoption perspective. For instance, play - an important topic in many parenting skills programmes - was discussed taking into account that the play of previously maltreated children may be disturbing to parents.
The course material needed to help them understand why their children may be playing in these ways and to reflect on their own responses to the play.
Other topics considered were
- Regressive behaviour in the children and the benefits in terms of attachments of allowing these children to be 'babied.'
- Helping the children to recognise, cope with and regulate their feelings.
- How to use praise and rewards with this group of children who tend to have low self esteem and might find positive attention unsettling.
- The appropriateness of parental use of techniques such as 'Time Out' and 'Ignoring' in the light of the backgrounds of the children, many of whom may have experienced considerable neglect.
The programme was evaluated by asking the parents to complete two questionnaires, before the course and immediately after it - The Parenting Stress Index and the 'Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire.'
The evaluation was able to demonstrate considerable positive benefits for the families who attended. Parenting stress levels fell and there were significant improvements within the parent-child relationship. Parents also reported feeling more competent after the course, finding their children more rewarding and less difficult to manage. There were reductions in parental reports of conduct disorder and hyper-activity and a reduction in the general level of behavioural difficulties reported by parents amongst their children.
The project provided an effective tool to help parents develop their parenting skills and improve their interactions with their children - and has been developed into a short course at the Anna Freud Centre training CAMHS and Adoption Support workers to provide support focusing specifically on adoption issues within the framework of the Incredible Years programme. Click here for more information.
The research project was funded by The Headley Trust and headed by Dr Miriam Steele of UCL/the Anna Freud Centre, Dr Jill Hodges of Great Ormond Street Hospital and Jeanne Kaniuk of Coram Family Adoption Service.