Online Post-Placement Training for Special Needs Adoptive and Kinship Parents

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant In this revised Phase II the project will develop and evaluate a set of five online training workshops designed to help foster adoptive and kinship parents safely and empathically understand and reduce externalized behavior problems of children ages in their care following and throughout their placement The training incorporates emerging theory about complex trauma and its relationship to the cardinal behavior problems of maltreated children in kinship and adoptive families The proposed training series will address these issues by combining recommendations for intervention by the National Child Trauma Stress Network with a proven effective approach titled Nurturing Parent Program Each workshop uses an externalized behavior problem as a portal for parents to explore the historical and psychological basis of their childandapos s problem to examine and alter their non empathic unrealistic parent attitudes and expectations and to learn how to effectively parent the child The workshops are driven by a custom designed software engine developed in Phase I that incorporates andquot serious gameandquot features and that automates and seamlessly integrates media components including video audio text interactive exercises individualized response exercises and a participant discussion board Results in Phase I provided support for the effectiveness of the interactive multimedia format for the parent workshop Parents made significant gains in knowledge and confidence from pre to post test and the gains were maintained at the month follow up assessment Many adoptive and kinship parents find themselves feeling isolated abandoned and challenged by a child with severe behavior problems Unfortunately this is a recipe for the dissolution disruption or displacement of the adoption along with a lifetime of emotional scars for the child and family Childrenandapos s behavioral problems also place them at risk of re abuse in out of home care Unlike any comparable resource the proposed workshops have the potential of creating a paradigmatic shift in clinical practice by providing innovative online training and support specifically designed for post placement families with children with special needs Each workshop will be individually evaluated with a sample of post placement families Core outcome measures are a standardized part of the Nurturing Parent Program In addition we will assess changes in child externalized behavior problems Outcomes will also be assessed at a month follow up Subjects participating in this project will gain important information about parenting foster adoptive and kinship children with special needs The training may help them to better understand and parent childrenandapos s externalizing behavior problems As a result the quality of parent child relationships in resource families could improve which could help stabilize placements and improve childrenandapos s short and long term mental health outcomes