.3..m.4..3 e . . _ in t. ...r.l ‘.A.L.... 1.3.1, . . 1...;rv .Y7.|Il.w u. .I 3. . |h.‘.. .. .r {can}: u ,1!!! s.. \J 7 J P IllIllllllllllllllllll 31293 00785 1615 mm This is to certify that the thesis entitled DROP-IN CENTERS: WHO USES THEM AND WHY presented by Karen Irene Young has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for M-Ar degree in Wong}! Major professor DateiebLuALy—2L._199O 0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution if ‘ ‘ LIBRARY 3.: lchigan State L {university 1‘ PLACE ll RETURN BOX to remove thie checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES retun on or before ode due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE MSU Ie An Affirmdlve Actlor'VEquel Opportunity lnetltuion Wanna-m DROP-1N CENTERS: HHO uses THEN AND HHY By Karen Irene Young A THESIS Subeitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfilleent of the requireeente for the degree of HABTER OF ARTS Departeent of Psychology 1990 (9050734 ABSTRACT DROP-IN CENTERS: HHO uses THEN AND NHv BY Karen Irene Young An exploratory study was conducted with a saaple of 60 parents (55 feaales and 5 aales) at a drop-in center in Lansing, Hichigan. Five research questions designed to provide detailed inforaation about parents using the services of the drop-in center were investigated. Pertinent inforaation was gathered with the Participant lnforaation Fora, the Parental Attitude Questionnaire, the Structured Interview, the Participant Satisfaction Survey, and the Prograa Register. Although there is reason to believe that the saaple say not be representative of the larger parent population at the drop-in center, the results revealed that overall participation in services was low. The respite child care service, however, was used eore frequently than the parent support group and education services. Additionally, correlational analyses suggested that three 'risk factors' associated with child abuse and neglect say be present aaong the parents in the saaple. ACKNOHLEDBHENTS A word at thanks to all faculty who assisted with this research project. A very special thank you to ay faaily, especially ey husband and ey parents, whose support and encourageaent was the source of ay strength. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables Chapter I: Introduction Prevention Definitions of Child Abuse and Neglect Incidence - Etiology of Child Abuse and Neglect Parent Focus Child Focus Faeily Interaction Focus Situational Stress Focus Ecological Focus Child Abuse and Neglect Intervention Strategies Parent Focused Interventions Child Focused Intervention Situational Stress Interventions Ecological Intervention Iaplications for Research Chapter II: Hethod Saaple and Procedures Instrueents and Scales Reliability Chapter III: Results Descriptive Results Additional Descriptive Inforaation Chapter IV: Discussion Iaplications Future Directions References Appendix A: Letter Introducing the Research Project Appendix B: Telephone Script iv vi 33 42 47 53 53 62 73 79 85 87 92 93 Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix C: D: F: S: H: I: Consent Fora Structured Interview Participant lnforaation Fore Parental Attitude Guestionnaire Participant Satisfaction Survey Prograa Register Iteas Appearing on the Research Instrueents 94 96 104 106 108 III 112 Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 1: 2: 3: 4: Si 6: 7: LIST OF TABLES Status of Parents Approached During Each honth of Data Collection Coapiled Three Honth Totals and Participation Rates Parent Variable Scales and Psychoaetric Properties Intercorrelations Between Parent Variable Scales Deaographic Characteristics Service Areas Reported by Parents as Helpful and Not Helpful Spearaan Correlations Between Service Types and the Parent Variable Scales (Per Parent Report) Spearaan Correlations Between Service Types and the Parent Variable Scales (Per FSC Official Report) vi 3B 43 48 51 54 63 70 72 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The changing nature of the Aaerican society froe an extended faeily network to a nuclear faeily unit has increased the difficulty of childrearing for eany parents. Parents who are typically least likely to be able to seat the needs of their children are those who live in geographical or psychological isolation froe their own faailies (Collette t Bragg, 1981, Collette, 1979; Egeland & Brunguell, 1979; Belles k Cornell, 1985; Michigan Departeent of Social Services, 1984). In these instances, extended faaily is no longer available to provide parents with services such as respite froe child care and eeotional support. Furtheraore, isolated parents say also lack proper parenting skills and appropriate knowledge about child developaent and say have difficulty understanding their childrens' needs and behavior (Frank A Rowe, 1981; Kadushin A Hartin, 1981; Steele k Pollock, 1968). The faaily drop-in center is a child abuse and neglect prevention prograa created in response to the growing concern for the welfare of children whose parents say be experiencing social isolation, unaanageable stress, and who say be in need of child developaent inforaation, peer support, or respite child care. The drop-in center is a place where faailies can go at their own convenience to receive assistance when they need it. The types of activities and services available to faailies through involveaent in a drop-in center vary froe center to center. For exaaple, educational and vocational training, career guidance, Job placeeent, stress aanageaent, physical fitness prograss, arts and crafts, and crisis assistance are aaong the activities and services offered. In addition to these activities and services, there are three areas of focus for east drop-in centers: 1) provision of respite child care service, 2) coapetency enhanceeent (e.g., providing parent education classes to increase self-esteee and knowledge about child developaent), and 3) social support (e.g., getting parents involved in a variety of social activities, widening their circle of acquaintances, providing inforaation and referrals to coaeunity resources). Although the drop-in center concept has becoee a popular aanner in which to facilitate the developaent of positive faaily relationships and prevent the onset of dysfunctional interactions, particularly child physical abuse and neglect, a review of the pertinent literature has revealed that there is a paucity of inforaation available describing their functioning, the services they provide, and the populationls) they serve. In an attespt to assist in the aaendaent of this deficiency in the literature, several research questions were foraulated and posed to participants of a Lansing, Michigan based drop-in center. For exaaple, are the social support (i.e., peer support groups), parent education, and respite child care services positively related to such parent variables as parenting attitude, available social support, residential stability, life stress, and satisfaction with drop-in center services? A variety of research has been conducted that has assessed the effects of social support on parents, particularly aothers. For exaaple, the total aaount of social support received by eothers was found to be positively correlated with the frequency of appropriate aaternal behavior (Colletta A Bregg, 1981): and several studies have indicated that aaternal support functions as a buffer in the aother- child relationship and in the stiaulation of the child (Adaaakos et al., 1986: Egeland k Brunquell, 1979: Pascoes, Loda, Jefferies, A Earp, 1901). Additionally, the work by Adasakos et al. (1966), Cobb (1976), and Henderson (1980), supports the contention that the provision of social support acts as a aoderator or buffer of life stress. Research on the effects of parent education on parenting attitude and childrearing techniques has shown that through training, parents can increase their knowledge about the sectional and physical developaent of children and learn aore effective parenting skills such as nonpunitive approaches to discipline (e.g., Frank A Rowe, 1981; Kadushin & Martin, 1981: Resnick, 1985). Mhile a plethora of inforaation is available that docuaents the positive relationship between social support and parent education on a variety of parent variables, very little inforaation is available concerning the relationship between the provision of respite child care on parent variables. The other research questions investigated in this study focused on who the consuaers of services were, their frequency of prograa participation and services east and least often utilized, reasons for utilizing the drop-in center, and satisfaction with services rendered. Before proceeding further, it would be helpful to briefly describe the aanner in which the forthcoaing aaterial is organized. First, child abuse and neglect prevention strategies are discussed. Second, various definitions of child abuse and neglect are reviewed as well as incidence data. Third, several etiological explanations of child abuse and neglect are presented along with aethods of intervention. Fourth, the leplications for research are specified. This is followed, finally, by a description of the aethodology, results, and discussion sections. A W Drop-in centers and other coeeunity progress that attespt to positively affect the parenting attitudes and value systeas of individuals in the general population or a specific group of individuals within the population considered to be 'at risk' are becoaing increasingly popular as aethods to reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. One reason for the popularity of these prieary and secondary preventive efforts is that they appear to be a sore positive way in which to deliver services and, in the long run, say be a sore cost effective aethod of service provision as coapared to sore traditional after-the-fact treataent and rehabilitative efforts (tertiary prevention). The definitions of each of these three prevention concepts as they are typically defined in the child abuse and neglect literature will be presented next. The need for precise explanations is paraaount as there are probably as aany differing definitions of these concepts as there are disciplines that utilize thee (Blooe, 1980). Priaary prevention services attespt to reduce the occurrence of child abuse and neglect by influencing attitudes, behavior, and knowledge through the provision of services to all aeebers of a general population. Secondary prevention services are designed to decrease the probability that child abuse and neglect will occur in a group acknowledged to be 'at risk.‘ Tertiary prevention services are designed for the treataent of individuals who have abused or neglected a child and those who have been abused or neglected. Treataent services are priearily rehabilitative. As increasing nuaber of prieary and secondary prevention progress are established the goal is that they will supplant the need for after-the-fact eedical/psychologicel treataent, legal services, social services, and rehabilitation provided through tertiary prevention strategies. However, until recently, prieary and secondary prevention prograas have had to coapete with tertiary prevention progress for federal and local dollars. Tertiary prevention usually won due to the pressing need to treat the vast nuaber of children who have already fallen victia to abuse and the adults who inflicted their injuries. low, with the advent of Children‘s Trust Funds and federal legislation, eore eoney is available to direct prieary and secondary preventive efforts toward parents, other individual caretakers, and children to decrease the incidence of child abuse and neglect. As of 1907, 30 Children's Trust Funds have been established in as aany states. The eost coaeon types of prevention progress offered by these states were reported in a survey of the Governors initiated in 1906 by two aeebers of the House of Representatives Select Cosaittee on Children, Youth, and Faailies 0eorge Hiller, California and Dan Coats, Indiana. It was found that approxiaately 501 of the states with Trust Funds offered parent education and 411 provided prenatal and perinatal services to high risk woaen and teenagers and their infants. Other prevention prograas offered by several states focused on respite child care, crisis nurseries, and early screening for developaental disabilities. The authors also found that states were seeing to recognize that reaoving children free their parents should only be a last resort: 10 states provided faeily preservation services, while 22 and 17 states, respectively, allocated higher funding to hoaeaeking and parent aid services (reported in Select Cosaittee on Children, Youth, and Faailies: House of Representatives, 1907). Despite increases in the nuaber and types of prieary and secondary prevention services available, a 1902 review of the literature on child abuse prevention prograas revealed that the authors in 052 of the articles failed to evaluate whether the progress were effective in reducing abuse. Evaluation that has been conducted has yielded inconclusive evidence at best (e.g., Bray, Cutler, Dean, 0 Keeps 1979; Sabinet, 1979: Siegel, Bauean, Schaffer, Saunders, k lngraa, 1900). Although every parent has the potential to abuse a child at soee tiee (Michigan Departeent of Social Services, 1904) factors eay exist that place certain parents at greater risk and thus, in greater need for prevention services. For exaaple, parents who are socially isolated, who experience unyielding stress, and who lack proper child developeent knowledge and child care skills should have access to resources that will assist thee in strengthening not only their parenting abilities but also their self-esteee. Hith this in aind, aany child abuse prevention prograas attespt to change any negative attitudes and behavior parents say have concerning child developeent and childrearing, reduce feelings of isolation, and ieprove coping skills. Hhen parents attend parent education classes, participate in peer support groups etc., they have the opportunity to becoee eapowered with the knowledge necessary to help thee replace ignorance and inappropriate expectations with positive parenting skills. It is hoped that individuals so eapowered will begin to feel better about theeselves and, thus, becoee eore effective as parents (Hallach b Heissbourd, 1979). In the words of Vincent J. Fontana, '...0ood parenting is the best eedicine for the disease of child abuse' (Fontana, 1900 p. 54). WILLIE-I. The seeinal work 'The Battered Child' by R. E. Helfer and C. H. Keepe (1960) brought child abuse into the open and gave it credence as a social phenoeenon. Their definition of abuse was lieited to purposefully inflicted injuries, via physical assault, that could be diagnosed based on their eedical and physical syeptoes. This initial definition of child abuse was narrow in the sense that it lieited abuse to the actual, willful, or intentional physical injury inflicted upon the child by a parent or caregiver. As the battered child syndroee gained eore recognition as a social problee, the definitions of child abuse were subsequently expanded to include acts or inactions that iepede the noreal developeent of the child. The definition adopted by The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (Public Law 03-237) attespted to go beyond a definition of abusive action resulting in diagnosable injury to also include nonphysical acts, eental injury, and negligent treataent. A coeprehensive approach taken to analyze and broadly define child abuse has been advocated by Bil (1973). He defined child abuse as: “Any act of coeeission or oaission by individuals, institutions, or society as a whole, and any conditions resulting froe such acts of inaction, which deprive children of equal rights and liberties and/or interfere with their optieal developeent' (p. 7). Hith the inclusion of neglect into the definition, however, discrepancies have arisen in the statistical coepilation of abuse rates. In aany instances, acts of coeeission are not distinguished froe acts of oaission and this leads to spurious accounts of the actual nuaber of child abuse cases reported yearly. The tere “child ealtreataent' (an all encoepassing tere) was advocated by aany in the field of child abuse (Fontana, 1900; Barbarino, 1977) as a way to circuevent the confusion raised by the separate teres of abuse and neglect. Not only is there a lack of agreeeent concerning the definition of abuse, but in eost instances, clear evidence of how an injury was inflicted is difficult to detereine: the eost coeeon injuries (cuts, broken liebs, bruises, etc.) can appear to be caused by accidents. However, physical exaeinations, a review of the child's eedical history, and interviews with both child and parents, say reveal pertinent inforaation that can aid in distinguishing abuse froe accident. Incidents. Prior to the enacteent of eandatory reporting laws in all 50 states, Bil's 1967 national survey of the prevalence of child abuse revealed that 6000 valid cases had been reported (Bil, 1970). States ranged in cases reported froe none to 3500. Extrapolating froe the responses of a representative saeple of 1520 adults, Bil concluded that between 2.53 and 4.07 eillion children were actually abused each year -- roughly between 13.3 and 21.4 incidents of abuse per 1000 persons in the United States (figures based on a total population of 110 eillion adults). Mearly ten years after Bil's survey the findings of two 10 independent studies, one conducted by Burgdorf (1900) for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect and the other by the Aeerican Hueane Association (1900, reported in Belles A Cornell, 1905) reported child abuse and neglect figures that ranged froe 625,000 (10.5 per 1000 children) to 700,044, respectively. The Aeerican Hueane Association (1904) docuaented the nuaber of reported cases of abuse and neglect in 1902 to be 929,310 -- an increase of 123% since 1976 when incidence data were first gathered by the Aeerican Hueane Association. A aore recent report conducted by Hestat, Inc. (1900) for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, stated that countable cases of abuse and neglect increased froe 625,100 in 1900 to 1,025,900 in 1906. Abusive and daeaging acts directed toward children are eanifest in a variety of ways, the east publicized of which is physical abuse. At the extreees, physical abuse ranges froe spanking, slapping, and shoving to fracturing of liebs and skulls, and death. Although physical abuse receives the bulk of public attention, only 262 of the total nuaber of reported cases of ealtreateent in 1902 was categorized as physical abuse. Neglect was by far the aost coeeon eanifestation of abuse (43!). Based on inforaation obtained froe The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the Aeerican Hueane Association, the National Study of Child Neglect and Abuse, and various researchers between the years 1976 and 1979, Kadushin A Martin (1901) reported that ' ...the sore typical physically abused child is a school-aged child who has sustained einor physical injury not requiring eedical attention of any 11 kind. The child was abused by one of the biological parents, the report of abuse having been eade eost frequently by friends, relatives, or neighbors. The child lives in a low-incoee household, froe which he is not reeoved' (p. 11). It is a widespread belief that child abuse is a phenoeenon confined to those with lower socioeconoeic status. To the contrary, abuse is eanifest aaong the wealthy as well as the poor. Abuse knows no boundaries. It transcends race, religion, level of intellect and afflicts children of all ages (Alvy, 1975: Fontana, 1900: Belles t Cornell 1905: Steele k Pollock, 1960). Nith the broadening of the definitions of child abuse and the upsurge in services provided on the state and local levels (e.g., crisis lines, hot lines, hiring additional social workers to investigate reports of abuse) it is difficult to detereine if child ealtreateent is actually on the rise or if the figures reflect the increase in official reporting (Belles A Cornell, 1905). Taking this dileeea into consideration, along with the fact that there are a variety of ways in which child abuse is reported by state (e.g., jurisdictions with higher rates of abuse tend to report by faeily -- counting the abused child gn1,hislher siblings -- rather than by individual child), caution eust be taken when interpreting incidence data. Although different sources report different figures of child abuse, abuse does exist and a substantial nuaber of children are victieized each year. The absence of accurate incidence date has not 12 deterred the search to identify and explain the causels) of abuse. Etiology or Child Abuse and Neglect There are two eajor explanations for the etiology of child abuse. One is the psychopathological aodel that states that individuals who abuse are 'sick' and in need of psychiatric treataent. The other eajor theory of causation is the situational stress aodel that eephasizes the fact that everyday problees of living, crisis events, and social isolation can lead to iepulsive and abusive actions on the part of the parent when their threshold of tolerance has been reached. Other explanatory aodels of abuse to be discussed include theories of causation that focus on the childhood history of the abusing parent; the child as a contributor to the abuse event: dysfunctional faeilial interactions: and abuse as the result of eultiple risk factors. Eacent.£ecua. EIL1gn11111_§ngplgtgnigtisg, Professions that have traditionally considered intrapsychic conflicts and a childhood history of abuse to be eajor causes of child abuse include eedicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. Personality characteristics such as severe depression, low frustration tolerance, aggressive reactions to stress, low self-esteee, iepulsivity, dependency, and iaeaturity, have all been ieplicated as negative factors that trigger abusive actions (Boisvert, 1972: Davidson, 1977). The developeent of psychological profiles has been advocated as a aethod that could be utilized to differentiate abusers froe 13 nonabusers. The profile would be coeprised of personality characteristics believed to be coeeon to abusers. Although factors such as depression, iepulsivity, and ieeaturity have been associated with abuse, no unifore personality profile of abusers has yet eeerged. If, however, differences do indeed exist aaong caregivers along these dieensions, then the profile could be used to predict which individuals are at risk to abuse. Several individuals in the child abuse and neglect field are opposed to this type of prevention strategy (e.g., Alvy, 1975: Belles A Boldstein, reported in Brodner, 1977). According to Alvy (1975), the strategy would deflect attention away froe other viable causes of child abuse while continuing the age old practice of blaeing the individual. An even sore serious disadvantage of the psychological profile would be the slew of legal and aoral issues certain to arise as a result of individuals being diagnosed as true-positives as well as false-positives. Belles and Boldstein (reported in Brodner, 1977) also expressed skepticise about this type of approach. In their view, little faith can be placed in psychological profiles based on research in which 1) unrepresentative saeples and no control groups were used, 2) the authors on the subject disagree about the personality characteristics possessed by abusive parents, and 3) the designs and explanations of the characteristics are generally of an anecdotal and ex post facto nature. There also exists a prevalent eyth in Aeerican society that only individuals suffering froe eental illness or psychiatric disorder are capable of inflicting abuse upon another faeily eeeber (Belles A 14 Cornell, 1905). This ayth survives into the 1900's even though it has been found that less than :0: of all faeily violence (i.e., child abuse, spouse abuse, elder abuse) is perpetrated by individuals who are 'sick' (Barbarino, 1903: Belles, 1976: Helfer, 1970; Straus, 1900). It would then appear that since the likelihood of being injured (e.g., slapped, physically assaulted, beaten, killed) is. greater Nithin the faeily hose than out in the general public (Belles A Cornell, 1905) that the vast eajority of abusers are faeily aeebers who are not psychologically iepaired. For exaaple, deeographic characteristics of reported faeilies coepiled in The Highlights of Official Child Neglect and Abuse Reporting 1902 docuaent (Aeerican Hueane Association, 1904) revealed that at least 771 of the perpetrators of abuse were also the child's caregiver. Caregiver was defined as 'en adult who has full tiee responsibility for a child and would not include, for exaaple, babysitters or teachers“ (p. 7). In the eajority of instances, the caregiver was the child's parent. The average age of the perpetrator was 31.2 years: 30.6! were sale and 61.41 were feeale: 692 were Hhite, 19.7% were Black, 9.2! were Hispanic, and 2.12 coeprised the 'other' category. EjLentjl_njgtnnx_gi_jhugg, Parents who theeselves were abused, either physically or eeotionally, as children not only eanifest aany of the negative personality characteristics described above, but they say also have unrealistic expectations about what children are capable of doing at certain stages of developeent (Boisvert, 1972). The lack of parenting knowledge eay stee froe the fact that aany abusive 15 parents were, as children, deprived of learning what a successful faeily relationship should be like because their parents were poor role aodels (Michigan Departeent of Social Services, 1904). It should be eade clear that individuals who were abused or treated harshly as children do not autoeatically grow up to be abusers theeselves. Belief in the detereinistic stateeent that they will can have two deliterious effects on the victias of abuse (Belles A Cornell 1905). First, they eay avoid earriage and conceiving children because they believe theeselves to be 'preprograeeed' for abusive behavior. Second, social workers, physicians, eeergency rooe personnel etc., say be sore apt to label a child's injury as resulting froe abuse if they are aware that a parent experienced abuse as a child. Both disturbances in parental personality and a history of abuse and/or neglect place parents at greater risk for abusing their own children and an intergenerational cycle of abuse say be perpetuated when no one in the cycle is treated. We. §n111_5ngnggtgzjjtjsj, Several child characteristics that say place children at greater risk for abuse have been reported in the literature. For instance, infant teeperaeent. Individual differences in reactivity and self regulation that are assuaed to have a constitutional basis (Elster, McAnarney, A Laeb, 1903) have been cited as factors that eay predispose infants to be the victias of abusive behavior, particularly those who are perceived by their parents as teeperaeentally difficult (Friedrich A Boriskin, 1976). Most studies 16 of teeperaeent have assessed newborn behavioral characteristics either through indirect or direct aethods. The two eost widely,used of these aethods, aaternal self report and the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assesseent Scale, have both been criticized. For instance, if teeperaeent has a constitutional basis, it appears then that subjective eeasureeent (e.g., via aaternal self-report) is contraindicated. However, Saeeroff (reported in Elster, McAnarney, A Laeb, 1903) has also asserted that the Brazelton (an objective eeesure) say have poor psychoeetric properties when used to assess individual differences. Other child characteristics cited in the literature that say predispose children to abuse include very young age (011, 1970; Davidson, 1977), physical and eental handicaps (Belsky, 1900; 011, 1970), being born a eale (Davidson, 1977), preeaturity (Belsky, 1900: Bil, 1970), being designated as teeperaeentally difficult or hyperactive (Bil, 1970; Davidson, 1977). At the seas tiee, however, there are data that refute the aforeeentioned findings. For exaaple, a study that exaeined the variables of preeaturity, delivery coeplications, and the presence of physical anoealies found thee unrelated to subsequent ineffective aaternal parenting (Egeland A Vaughn, 1901). Although the data are eixed, aany (e.g., Belsky, 1904: Brodner, 1977: Kadushin A Martin, 1901) have coee to agree that characteristics that eake children difficult to care for play a role in eolding the quality of parental care they receive. 17 W In general, the existing parent-child research and literature decidedly devotes eore attention to the parent variable in the explanation and understanding of child abuse while focusing to a such sealler extent on the child variable. This unidirectional orientation is, however, slowly beginning to give way to an approach that eephasizes the child's role in actively directing the course of events. More specifically, bidirectionality in the parent-child relationship characterizes '...child behavior as an antecedent to parents' behavior, [and] not solely as a consequence of parent behavior' (Nadushin A Martin, 1901, p. 40). The next two sections will focus briefly on the literature that centers on the child's influence in detereining parental behavior and on the child's contribution to the bidirectional interaction associated with physical abuse. W. As was eentioned earlier, aany researchers believe that characteristics of the child, whether they be inherent or environeentally derived, will influence how the caregiver responds. Kadushin and Nartin's 1901 literature review highlighted studies that supported the hypothesis that children are instrueental in shaping the behavior of their caregivers. It was found, for exaaple, that infants who failed to initiate such behavior as eye contact, sailing, following, and visual fixation were viewed less positively by their prieiparous eothers than infants who engaged in such behavior (Robson A Moss, 1970, p. 54); parents whose children 18 sere unresponsive, not adaptable, unpredictable, irritable, and who had irregular eating, sleeping, and elieination patterns found '...the role of parenting unrewarding. They [felt] inadequate, iepatient, and burdened' (Thoeas, Chess, A Birch, 1963, pp. 54-55); foster eothers behaved quite differently with a series of foster children who were in their care over a period of tiee. It was posited that the foster eother reacted 'in response to the unique individual differences the child brought to the relationship' (Yarrow, 1963, pp. 56-57); and overactive children were believed to be sore deserving of severe discipline than children who exhibited lower activity levels (Stevens- Long, 1973, p. 59). W- The research cited above deeonstrates the reciprocity that occurs within parent-child relationships in general. This sase type of sutual exchange is also specifically eanifest within the child abuse interaction. An increasing nuaber of researchers espouse this point of view (Belsky, 1900: Brodner, 1977: Kadushin A Martin, 1901). The basic consensus is that abused children should no longer be viewed as the passive recipients of their caregivers daeaging actions but that their own behavior, in aany instances, actually provokes caregivers to act in a hostile fashion. For exaaple, a child she is viewed as 'different' (e.g., hyperactive, teeperaeentally difficult, handicapped) has a strong influence on his/her caregiver's behavior (Belsky, 1900: Davidson, 1977; Bil, 1970). The caregiver in this situation eust be tolerant of frustration sore frequently and for 19 longer periods and is sore apt to resign to ispulse or teeper which leads to abusive behavior and the cycle of child behavior and caregiver abuse continues (Brodner, 1977). Various other studies have suggested that preeature and low birth weight infants are at greater risk for abuse as a result of the disruption that occurs in the bonding process when they are kept in the hospital following their sothers' return hose. These children also require sore care once they are brought hose and are thus perceived by their eothers as sore desanding (Kadushin A Martin, 193:). W Nhen society targets children as the legitieate recipients of physical force eany parents and caregivers believe that it is persissible to displace the negative eeotions (e.g., anger, disappointeent, and frustration) that arise froe a variety of stresses onto children. A ‘stress factor' as defined by the Aeerican Husane Association (1904) is 'a factor or condition (that) is perceived... to produce stress, tension, and problees within the faeily“ (p. 10). These can include health problees, crisis events (e.g., death in the faeily), social isolation, single-parent households, econoeic living condition problees, and faeily interaction problees (Barbarino, 1903: Bil, 1970; Light, 1973). Stress say lead parents to sisinterpret the signals of their children. They say incorrectly perceive the nature of their 20 childrens' cries if they are less tolerant of adversive stieuli and stress say also cause thee to respond isproperly and iepulsively. Many parents who experience pregnancy at an early age (e.g., adolescents) say be boebarded sieultaneously with a variety of situational crises such an as unplanned pregnancy, parenthood, and possibly earriage. Because this stress sanifests itself during the early stages of their own developeent, sany young parents are unequipped to handle it. The iepact of these stresses, however, becoees even greater when psychological ieeaturity is coupled with isolation froe faeily and friends (Fontana, 1900). Several studies have found that a higher incidence of abuse occurs within poverty stricken coeeunities (Barbarino, 1903; 011, 1970, 1973). The higher incidence, however, say be the result of residents having to deal with a greater aeount of daily stress and not their socioeconoeic status. Barbarino (1977) asserted that it is the uneanageability of the stress that leads to abusive behavior. He also noted, however, that the uneanageability is the result of the disparity between the level of stress and the availability of social support systeas. Sgg;gl_ggngg;t, Conceptually, social support is seen as a aoderator or buffer of life stress (Adaeakos et al., 1906: Cobb, 1976; Henderson, 1900). It has been identified by Cobb (1976) as "inforaation leading the subject to believe that he is cared for and loved, esteeeed and a eeeber of a network of sutual obligations” (p. 300). A host of individuals (e.g., relatives, neighbors, friends, 21 professionals and paraprofessionals in the coeeunity) can be described as socially supportive in that they say facilitate an individual's ability to cope with stress. However, there say be differences in the aeount and kind(s) of support (e.g., esotional support, practical assistance, advice and inforaation, coepanionship) these individuals provide. For exaaple, research has identified social support network aeebers who perfore in the capacity of 'support specialists" or I'support generalists' (e.g., Bogat et al., 1905: Bottlieb, 1901; Lowenthal A Haven, 1960: Miller A Inghae, 1976). Support specialists offer a single, unique kind of support to an individual. Their assistance is sought when specific knowledge in a particular area is required. Support generalists, on the other hand, say provide an individual with unlisited support in a variety of different areas. It has long been advocated that one of the factors necessary for the eaintenance of eental health is the receipt of social support (Elster, McAnarney, A Laeb, 1903). Researchers have only recently, however, explored the effects social support has on parental behavior (Cochran A Bassard, 1979: Hirsch, 1900). For exaaple, Collette and Bregg (1901) found a positive correlation between total aeount of social support and the frequency of appropriate aaternal behavior. The results of another study conducted by Collette (1979) of low- and siddle-incoee single aothers and eiddle-incoee earried aothers of preschool-aged children indicated that the social support available to thee froe their spouse, relatives, and friends predicted the extent to which they desonstrated aaternal restrictiveness and punitiveness. 22 Several studies utilizing saeples froe both rural and urban populations have also provided evidence for the function of aaternal support in buffering stress in the sother-child relationship and in the provision of stiaulation to the child (Adaeakos et al., 1906: Egeland A Brunquell, 1979: Pascoes, Loda, Jefferies, A Earp, 1901). Isproving the social networks of isolated parents is not always advantageous. Too such input froe a spouse, relatives, and friends can becoee stressful (Belsky, 1904). Social networks work best when network aeebers are able to provide support when it is desired. Social isolation is the product of the interplay between the individual and the environeent (Barbarino, 1977). Thus, social isolation results both free a lack of available social supports and also froe failure to take advantage of supports that are available. The potential for abuse is greater when parents have no faeily and friends to turn to when stressful situations arise. Faeily and friends say also serve as role aodels who practice proper childrearing . techniques. Abusive parents who are socially isolated say not have an opportunity to learn these proper techniques and thus continue to use violence when they encounter stressful situations (Belles A Cornell, 1905). Studies have also revealed that caregivers who abuse are distrustful, withdraw froe society (Eleer, 1967), and actively discourage their children froe foreing relationships outside the faeily unit (Young, 1964). This anti-social behavior is viewed as abnoreal in Aeerican society. 23 W Character defects, econoeic factors, crisis events, social isolation, child behaviors, disturbed intra-faeily relationships, physical ispoverishsent etc., have all been ieplicated as factors causing child abuse. But an ecological aodel holds that abuse is sore likely the result of two or sore of these factors in coebination. According to Barbarino (1977), the interaction of parental history, social structure, and historical change provides such inforaation about the “contexts and processes" that generate and perpetuate child abuse in general and child ealtreateent in particular. He asserted that 'there is no ‘pure context-free' developeent“ (Barbarino, 1977 p. 722). Belsky's ecological aodel of child ealtreateent (1900) is a eultifactorial causation aodel in which abuse and neglect are conceptualized as the product of eultiple risk factors. The integrated aodel is coeprised of four levels of analysis and is based on the work of two individuals, Tinbergen and Bronfenbrenner. The first level, ontogenic developeent, considers for exaaple, disturbances in parental personality, parental history of child abuse and/or neglect, and parents' lack of knowledge, and inappropriate attitudes concerning child rearing. The eicrosystee, or the second level of analysis, focuses on the faeily setting and all of the dysfuctional interactions that occur aaong faeily aeebers (e.g., earital discord, a teeperaeentally difficult child, scarce household resources). The third level, or the exosystee, considers social 24 isolation froe foreal and inforeal supports, unaanageable stress, and unesployeent. Finally, the forth level of analysis is the eacrosystee. Here, cultural beliefs and values play a significant role in influencing the events that occur within the sicro- and exosystees (e.g., the sanctioning of physical force to control childrens' behavior). According to Belsky, “not only does this fraeework eephasize the potentially causative role that each of these factors (i.e., individual, faeilial, coeeunity, and cultural) eay play in child ealtreateent, but it also explicitly recognizes their interaction in the etiology of child abuse and neglect' (p. 330). As has been revealed in this section, there exists a variety of explanations concerning the etiology of child abuse. Although the psychopathological aodel and the situational stress aodel are the aost widely accepted of the causative explanations, convergence toward one aodel has yet to occur. This lack of agreeeent say be the result of the coeplexity of the child abuse phenoeenon. The ecological aodel, however, say prove to be the aost proeising of the causative explanations since it explicitly takes the issue of coeplexity into consideration by advancing that abuse is aost likely the result of sore than one risk factor. Biven these diverse etiological explanations of child abuse, various intervention strategies have been designed, based on the preeises of their respective theories, to help parents break the cycle of child abuse and neglect and/or prevent the cycle froe ever 25 beginning. Child Abuse and Neglect Intervention Strategies Just as the aost widely accepted etiological theory of child abuse focuses on the abusive parent, the sost widely accepted fore of treataent for abuse is individual therapy (e.g., psychotherapy) for the parent. There are, however, aethods of intervention that take the needs of the abused child into consideration (e.g., the faeily systeas intervention). Although individual therapy for parents and the faeily systeas intervention will not be discussed, other interventions that focus on the parent, child, situational stress, and an interplay of risk factors will be presented. W £3L1n5_11u§1112n, Most people think that parenting is instinctual and requires no foreal training. It is this ignorance of proper parenting skills that leads aany parents to abuse their children (Frank A Rowe, 1901). Steele and Pollock (1960) coseented on the unrealistic expectations aany parents have for their children by stating that they '...Expect and deeand a great deal froe their infants and children. Not only is the dssand for perforsancs great but it is preeature, clearly beyond the ability of the infant to cosprehend what is wanted and to respond appropriately. Parents deal with the child as if he were such older than he really is.‘ As a result, abuse say be greater in hoses where there are inappropriate expectations and desands sade on children. To offset the occurrence 26 of abusive behavior stsssing froe this apparent lack of knowledge, coapetency snhancesent prograas have been designed and isplesented to teach high risk parents about the physical and eeotional developeent of children (Frank A Rowe, 1901). One such prograa, Parent Effectiveness Training, has been incorporated into aany abuse prevention services to increase the parents' knowledge of alternative aethods of discipline. Childrearing skills are taught that eephasize nonpunitivs interactive and disciplinary approaches. The prograa sodsl is based on the presise that abusive parents who have lieited child developeent inforaation are in need of positive parenting training since they were not exposed to effective parent role aodels as children (Kadushin A Martin, 1901). Cospstency snhancesent prograas have yet, however, to prove theeselves as a viable strategy for the prevention of child abuse and neglect (Rosenberg A Reppucci, 1905). Although evaluation of several progress has desonstrated the short-tere snhancesent of parenting skills and child developeent knowledge (Resnick, 1905), no evaluation research is available to support a connection between short-tars coapetency snhancesent and long-tars prevention of child abuse and neglect (Resnick, 1905: Rosenberg A Reppucci, 1905). §n111_nggx31, The controversy concerning the resoval of a child froe an abusive environeent is not a recent phenoeenon. Many of the early pioneers in the field of child abuse and neglect (e.g., Helfer, 1970; Steele A Pollock, 1960) recognized the trend of increasing reliance on separating the abused child froe the abusive parent and 27 placing his/her in a foster hose as the intervention of choice. Although in aany instances separation is absolutely necessary, it does not allow for any of the issues surrounding the parent's abusive behavior to be resolved. The separation will only be tesporary and a .decision as to whether the child should be returned to parental custody will have to be sade. If during the interie no advances are sade to assist the parent in cosing to tsrss with their actions the pattern of abuse will sore than likely continue to eanifest itself within future parent-child interactions. WW I I;aditjgngl_5elgngnk, In instances where child abuse has been substantiated, the bulk of the protective caseworker's attention is focused on the faeily. Although aany caseworkers recognize that the abused child is in need of individual treataent, their large cassloads, coupled with their desire to effect the greatest aeount of change, leads thee to direct the eajority of their attention to the faeily (Holleean, 1903). It is for these reasons that sost caseworkers have cose to rely on foster care to solve the child's problees. Situat1sna1.§tceaa_1ntecxenttena. As alluded to earlier, the situational stress aodel is one of the two eajor theories that attespt to explain the etiology of child abuse. According to this vise, the lives of aany child abusers are earked by poor housing conditions, social isolation, earital and faeily discord, financial stress, single-parenthood, etc. Once a 28 potential abuser's threshold of tolerance has been surpassed, overwhelsing feelings of rage, anger, and frustration are typically displaced onto a defenseless child. A variety of interventive approaches are available to help reduce such of the stress that encroachss upon the faeily unit in order to strengthen its ability to cope with the resaining stress. For exaaple, the faeily can obtain assistance froe facilitative services such as, traditional casework, paraprofessionals, child care services (such as drop-in centers), and self-help organizations. ILAILALIDAL_£AIIIILLA Via inforaation obtained through interviews and naturalistic observation, the social worker is instrueental in deciding whether a child say be safely left in the care of parents, left at hoes -- provided sose other responsible person is there to provide protection, or eust be resoved froe the care of the parent and placed in a foster hose in the custody of juvenile court or child protective services (Steele A Pollock, 1960). As was eentioned previously, criticises have been directed at caseworkers for focusing the bulk of their energies and resources toward the abusive feeiliss while neglecting the individual treataent needs of the child (Helfer, 1970: Hollssan, 1903: Steele A Pollock, 196B). Egngnngigggjgnjlj, Instead of putting dollars into services like psychiatric care for abusive parents, Helfer (1970) proposed that a 'plan for protection,‘ that endeavors to sake the hose safe for the child to return to, be designed and isplesented. This strategy 29 provides abusing parents with 'substitute' aothers (i.e., parent aides) who '...begin to attack the wall of isolation that surrounds the parents.‘' This is accosplished by the parent aides assisting parents in developing friendships and teaching thee how to ask for and accept help froe others (e.g., the parent aide, spouse, friends, relatives, and neighbors). If the parent side is successful, the child can start returning to the hose approxiaately three to six sonths into the intervention (it usually takes that long to get parent aides accepted by and eeaningfully involved with the parents). Ehilfl.£l£l.ll£¥1£lln Innovations in 'shared parenting' offered through crisis nurseries, drop-in centers, and day care facilities have allowed aany parents to find tesporary relief froe unrelenting child care that eight othsreise lead to abuse. Crisis nurseries (or protective daycare centers) operate on a 24- hour, 7-day-a-week basis. Children are accepted at the nursery for short-tars care at all hours in an effort to spare thee froe any potentially abusive situations. That is, these facilities are typically used by caregivers eho consider their children to be a source of anxiety and frustration. Most nurseries accept a saxieue of five to seven children with a saxieue residential stay of 40 or 72 hours. This service is available as an alternative to foster care placeeent of children who are at great risk for abuse. Although the effectiveness of crisis nurseries in rs-establishing faeily stability has not as yet been espirically desonstrated, there are soee researchers who believe that it is beneficial (e.g., Crittenden, 30 I903). Drop-in centers allow parents to receive respite froe child care for a few hours any day the center is in operation. Centers tend to vary, however, in teres of their intake procedure and requiresents. Soee require that reservations be sade in advance before children can be dropped off and others operate on a first-coae-first-served basis. Many centers place a lisit on the nuaber of hours of respite a child say receive while others do not. Once children are accepted into the facility soee progress require parents to participate in a predetereined nuaber of parent support services and activities (e.g., peer support groups, parent education classes). Other centers require that the parents theeselves volunteer one or sore hours of their ties in the service of the center at a later data, while those centers that have a large reserve of coeeunity volunteers usually do not require parental participation. Due to the nature of both the crisis nursery and the drop-in center, the potential for parental eisuse of the facilities as a convenience rather than as a respite haven has to be sonitored (Kadushin A Nartin, 1901). Spli;ngln_n;ngnjzgtjnn1, Self-help groups such as Parents Anonysous provide parents with an effective adjunct group treataent resource. Participation is priearily voluntary but for approxiaately seven percent of abusing parents it is involuntary (Kadushin A Martin, 1901). Parents Anonysous was established in California in 1971 with the assistance of a social worker. Mesbership is estieated to be near 31 0,000 in soee 000 chapters nationwide. The socially supportive atsosphere helps to reduce the social isolation aany abusing parents experience. This, in turn, facilitates the parents' receptiveness to learn about sore positive behavior alternatives that are socially acceptable (Collins, 1970, reported in Kadushin A Martin, 1901). Parents Anonysous is also concerned about the treataent needs of the abused children. As sueearized by Kadushin and Martin (1901): 'treatsent involves offering education, role eodeling, support, clarification and a variety of concrete services within a constructive lisit-setting context, in an espathic, wars, noncondesnatory relationship...’ (p. 25). W The ecological interventive approach holds that child abuse and neglect stess not free one etiological source but froe two or sore sources. Therefore, the resulting interactions of the various risk factors that are present at each of four levels of analysis (i.e., the individual, faeilial, coeeunity, and cultural) sake intervention isplesentetion difficult. Iaplications for Research The available literature indicates that child abuse and neglect say result when parents feel burdened by the responsibility of around- the-clock child care, lack appropriate knowledge about child developeent, possess negative parenting attitudes, and are psychologically and/or geographically isolated froe both foreal and 32 inforsal support networks (Boisvert, 1972; Collette A Bregg, 1901: Collette, 1979: Crittenden, 1903; Egeland A Brunquell, 1979; Frank A Rowe, 1901; Belles A Cornell, 1905; Kadushin A Martin, 1901; Michigan Departeent of Social Services, 1904: Steele A Pollock, 1960). Although a variety of progress aised at parents and children attespt to counteract these potential abuse and neglect "risk'I factors, soee are sore well known than others and are widely described in the literature. Unlike, for exaaple, the literature describing perinatal coaching progress for first-tiee aothers, an organized body of knowledge describing drop-in centers is practically nonexistent. To help resediate this situation, five research questions designed to provide detailed inforaation concerning the functioning of a drop-in center, the services provided, and the populationls) served were foraulated and posed to participants of the Faeily Browth Center (FBC), a drop-in center whose interventions are focused on the parent (e.g., parent education classes) and situational stress (e.g., parent support groups and respite child care). The research questions were 1) Hho uses the services offered at the FBC? 2) Hhich FBC services do parents use and how often? 3) Hhat reasons do parents give for using FBC services? 4) How satisfied are parents with the services received froe the FBC? and 5) Hhat is the relation aaong the three service types (i.e., respite child care, parent support groups, and parent education) and five parent variables (i.e., available social support, parenting attitude, life stress, residential stability, and satisfaction with FBC services)? CHAPTER 11 METHOD §lllll_lnfl_£L2£llflLll. The subject population for this research project was individuals who were participants at three drop-in center facilities. The saeple of 60 participants case froe three Faeily Browth Center's (FBC) located in Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan. The Downtown Faeily Browth Center, which is housed within the Central United Nethodist Church, is located in downtown Lansing. The Mt. Hope Neighborhood Faeily Browth Center, also located in Lansing, is housed within the Bethlehes Lutheran Church. The East Lansing Faeily Browth Center is housed within the University United Methodist Church and is located in East Lansing. The Faeily Browth Center provides services not only to "high risk' parents, that is, parents who are experiencing social isolation, stress, and lack support networks, but those who are sore well- functioning are also eligible to receive services. The services offered to parents include parent education, parent support, inforaation and referral to needed services, and respite (or drop-in) child care. Involvesent in coeeunity activities such as these is one aanner in which the prograa attespts to reduce the parents' feelings of isolation and stress, build support networks, and enhance their knowledge about children and their healthy developeent. No 33 34 restrictions are placed on parent participation in any of the activities (i.e., participation is unlisited). One restriction, however, does exist for children participating in the drop-in child care coeponent: only children between the ages of two weeks and six years say participate. Although unlisited drop-in child care is provided, the children are taken on a first-cose-first-served basis each day the center is in operation until capacity is reached. The recruitsent process began with the researcher obtaining a cosplete list of all FBC prograa participants froe the FBC Prograa Director., This list, coeprised of 417 naees, included all parents who were registered at the FBC between January of 1907 and March of 1900. During the sonth of April 1900 14 new participants were registered, into the FBC prograa. Their nases were obtained and added to the original list (N I 431), in this aanner the list resained current and up-to-date. No new participants who were registered into the prograa after April 1900 were included in the study. A stratified research design was used to categorize the 431 nases based on length of prograa participation. To detereine the length of ties each of the participants had been receiving FBC services the aeount of ties froe January 1907 to the sonth the researcher would visit the parent (i.e., either March, April, or May 1900) was calculated. Using incresents of three sonth periods, the length of FBC participation was categorized as follows: 0-3 sonths, 4-6 sonths, 7-9 sonths, 10-12 sonths, and 13- 15 sonths. By the end of April 1900 there were 00 parents who had been participating between 0-3 sonths, 49 between 4-6 sonths, 57 35 between 7-9 sonths, 71 between 10-12 sonths, and 174 between 13-15 sonths. The nuaber of parents in each category was divided by 431 (the total population size). The resulting percentage was then sultiplied by 60 (the saeple size) to detereine the nuaber of parents to be randosly saepled froe each category. For exaaple, 00 % 431 I 10.61, .106 f 60 - 11. As a result, there were 11 parents randosly saepled froe the 0-3 sonth category, 7 froe the 4-6 sonth category, 0 froe the 7-9 sonth category, 10 froe the 10-12 sonth category, and 24 froe the 13-15 sonth category. The saeple of 60 participants is proportional to the population distribution in terss of length of prograa participation. Since the data collection period spanned over three sonths (i.e., harch through May of 1900) the length of prograa participation category for 154 of the 431 participants had to be upgraded (i.e., transferred to the next higher category) when data collection entered a new sonth. For exaaple, if a parent was originally assessed as having been an FBC participant for 6 sonths as of March 1900 (i.e., in the 4-6 sonth category), but was not randosly selected for participation in the study in March, her/his length of participation was upgraded to 7 sonths (i.e., to the 7-9 sonth category) when the randos selection process began for April 1900. In this way, length of prograa participation resained accurate up until the ties of the researcher's visit. It should be noted that since 13- 15 sonth is the highest category that all participants who were originally placed in this category or who were upgraded to this category will always reeein in this category. 36 To prepare the nases on the FBC participant list for the randos selection process each of the nases were nuebered froe 001 to 431. Only participants whose three digit identification nuaber was selected froe the randos nusbers list was approached for participation in the study. Each randosly selected FBC participant was sailed a letter (see Appendix A) that 1) briefly described the research project and 2) inforeed thee that they would receive a telephone call froe the researcher that would further detail the research project as well as their role as a participant and provide answers to any questions they had. During the telephone call (see Appendix B for the script that was used), the individual was told that the purpose of the research was to get a better idea of the people who used drop-in centers, to find out why they were used, what services were used, and to detereine their satisfaction with service delivery. Following this discussion, each individual was inforsed that an issediate reply was not necessary -- they would have 24 hours to asks a decision. Those who desired this extra ties were re-contacted by telephone after the designated period and asked for a decision. Hhen additional questions arose, they too were answered. In sost instances, participants did not want the extra ties to sake a decision as they were able to give the researcher an issediate response. After the individual agreed to participate, a tiee was scheduled for the researcher to visit to conduct the interview and adsinister the questionnaires. Hhile at their hoes, the 37 research project was explained once sore, questions answered, the consent fore was discussed and signed (see Appendix C), the Structured Interview conducted (see Appendix D), and the Participant Inforeation Fore (see Appendix E), the Parental Attitude Ouestionnaire (see Appendix F), and the Participant Satisfaction Survey (see Appendix B) cospleted, in this order. Hhen any individual declined participation, either before or after being given 24 hours notice, their nase was discarded froe the participant list and another naee was randosly selected froe the list. Participants in the study were also tracked over a four week period. The tracking procedure consisted of keeping a weekly prograa register on each participant and her/his child(ren). Specifically, the Prograa Register fore docuaented all FBC services utilized by the faeily and frequency of use during each of the four weeks prior to data collection (see Appendix H). Table 1 shows the status of each FBC participant over the three sonths of data collection. Reported are 1) the total nuaber of FBC participants registered in each length of prograa participation category, 2) the total nuaber approached (i.e., those randosly selected to receive a letter and telephone call), 3) the total nuaber of interviews cospleted (i.e., those that agreed to participate in the study), 4) the total nueber of interviews not cospleted and the reason they were not cospleted, 5) the total nuaber whose length of prograa participation category required upgrading prior to the start of the next data collection sonth, and 6) the total nuaber resaining in the 38 Table 1 WWW Lgngth gf Egztigjggtign gt thg ESQ Month 0-3eth 4-6sth 7-9sth 10-12sth 13-15sth FBC Parents Available to Participate (N - 417) Harch Registered 66 49 57 71 174 Approached 0 5 4 2 5 Cospleted 0 1 2 1 4 Not Cospleted 0 4 2 1 1 Reason Not Cospleted: a. not interested 0 0 0 0 0 b. no telephone 0 0 2 1 0 c. soved 0 4 0 0 0 d. three telephone calls 0 0 0 0 0 e. canceled visit 0 0 0 0 1 Upgraded 24 26 10 35 - Resaining in Selection Pool 42 10 35 34 169 39 Table 1 (cont'd.) W Month 0-3lth 4-6sth 7-9lth 10-12sth l3-1501h FBC Parents Available to Participate (N I 415) April Registered 56 42 61 52 204 Approached 13 10 6 14 29 Cospleted 4 1 4 1 6 Not Cospleted 9 9 2 13 23 Reason Not Cospleted: a. not interested 4 5 2 6 0 b. no telephone 3 2 0 0 3 c. sovsd 0 1 0 5 ‘0 d. three telephone calls 1 1 0 2 4 e. canceled visit 1 0 0 0 0 Upgraded 13 0 15 15 - Resaining in Selection Pool 30 24 40 23 175 40 Table 1 (cont'd.) Lanntn_et_Escitsieatien.at.ths.£fi£. Month 0-3sth 4-6sth 7-9sth 10-12eth 13-15sth FBC Parents Available to Participate (N I 343) May Registered 30 37 40 30 190 Approached 11 10 4 11 24 Cospleted 7 5 2 0 14 Not Cospleted 4 5 2 3 10 Reason Not Cospleted: a. not interested 3 2 1 1 1 b. no telephone 0 0 0 1 2 c. eoved 1 2 1 0 5 d. three telephone calls, 0 1 0 1 1 e. canceled visit 0 0 0 0 1 Upgraded - - - - - Resaining in Selection Pool :9 ' 27 44 27 166 41 participant selection pool at the end of the sonth (i.e., the total nuaber available for randos selection during the next data collection sonth). As can be seen in Table 1, there were a total of 417 parents participating at the FBC when data collection began during the fourth week of Narch 1900. Although 16 participants were approached to ascertain their interest in participating, only eight interviews were cospleted. By chance, none of the identification nusbers for parents in the 0-3 sonth category were randosly selected during the sonth. At the end of March it was necessary to upgrade the length of prograa participation category for 103 participants. A total of 401 FBC participants resained in the selection pool for the start of April. There were 14 new participants registered into the FBC prograa in April. This increased the total nuaber available in the selection pool to 415 during the sonth. Nhile 72 participants were approached, 16 interviews were cospleted and 56 were not cospleted. Length of prograa participation category was upgraded for 51 participants. There were 343 FBC participants in the selection pool for the start of May. No new participants who becase involved with the FBC after April were included in the study. During May 60 participants were approached. Fros this nuaber, 36 interviews were cospleted and 24 were not cospleted. At the end of the data collection period (i.e., May 1900) there were 203 FBC participants who had not been randosly selected to participate in the study. 42 Figures free the preceding sonthly tables were cospiled and are presented in Table 2. In addition, percentages reflecting the rate of participation for each length of prograa participation category is reported. The rates ranged froe 201 to 571. To detereine whether the variation in these percentages was significant a chi square test was perforsed. The result was not significant. This finding, then, suggests that there is no relationship between type of participant (i.e., parents approached in the five length of prograa participation categories) and their rate of participation in the study. Over the course of the recruitsent phase, telephone calls were placed to 140 randosly selected parents. Fifty-nine percent (n_I 00) either declined participation or could not be contacted for a variety of reasons. Nora specifically, 33 parents stated that they had no interest in participating; 27 had soved and left no forwarding telephone nuaber and/or address; 11 were elieinated when they could not be contacted after three attespts were sade by telephone; 14 parents without telephones were excluded when they failed to contact FBC staff about their interest in participating per the instructions on the letter they received; and 3 canceled scheduled interviews. WW There were five instrueents used in this study: the Participant Inforeation Fore, the Parental Attitude Ouestionnaire, the Structured Interview, the Participant Satisfaction Survey, and the Prograa Register. The first two instrueents were created by the Michigan Children's Trust Fund (1906) for use in eonitoring child abuse and neglect prevention 43 Table 2 WWW WW 0-3Ith 4-6Ith 7-9Ith 10-l2lth 13-15Ith FBC Parents Available to Participate (N I 431) Approached 24 25 14 27 50 Cospleted 11 7 0 10 24 Not Cospleted i3 10 6 17 34 Reason Not Cospleted: a. not interested 7 7 3 7 9 b. no telephone 3 2 2 2 5 c. saved 1 7 1 5 13 d. three telephone calls 1 2 0 3 5 e. canceled visit 1 0 0 \ 0 2 Participation Rate 461 201 571 371 411 44 progress. The Structured Interview was adapted froe the Maternal Interview created by Newberger, Haepton, Harx, A Hhite (1906). .The resaining two instrueents were created by the researcher for use in this study. No reliability inforaation is available for any of the instrueents. The Participant Inforeation Fore elicited deeographic inforaation froe the participants such as age, race, prieary source of incoee, aeount of faeily incoee, and whether the parent is presently expecting a child. The Parental Attitude Ouestionnaire elicited the participants' feelings about being a parent and the childrearing techniques generally used. The Structured Interview is a 40 einute interview. Parents were asked a variety of questions such as who were the people they felt they could turn to in tises of need (social supporters), level of foreal education cospleted, the length of ties they have resided in their present coeeunity, and questions about their perceptions of their childrsns' behavior (i.e., only children who were enrolled in drop-in child care at the FBC). The Participant Satisfaction Survey elicited the parents' degree of satisfaction with the FBC services, reasons for service use, and inquired as to which aspects of the prograa they found seat and least beneficial. Although the Prograa Register was not a participant instrueent, it was used by the researcher to docuaent all FBC services utilized by 45 the participants and their children and the frequency of service usage that occurred over the four week tracking period. Esbedded within the instrueents are five parent variables of interest for this research project: available social support, parenting attitude, life stress, residential stability, and satisfaction with FBC services. These variables were operationalized by the following scales: The e1gj1ahlg_§ggjgl_§gpggnt_§;glg_docuaented the nuaber of individuals who provided parents with each of four types of social support, the nuaber of individuals reported as providers of three types of support (this is an extrapolated ites, that is, derived froe parents' responses to other social support questions), recent involvesent in social functions, and seebership in groups and organizations. The seven itess of this scale were presented to the parents in a fill in the blank forsat. See Appendix I for a listing of the available social support scale itess as well as the itess for the other four scales. The Eg;ggtjng_fittitgflp_figglg,assessed how the parents felt about their parenting ability, the discipline technique(s) used, and their relationship with their children in a variety of areas. There are six itess on this scale. The itess were presented in a eultiple choice forsat with responses ranging froe strongly agree to strongly disagree on a five point likert-type scale. The LLig_§tngg_§§glg_elicited inforaation froe parents concerning the nuaber of their children who had been enrolled in drop-in child 46 cars at the FBC and their subjective rating of the aeount of stress that results froe particular behaviors exhibited by their second and third youngest children who were enrolled in drop-in child care. Parents indicated their perceived degree of life stress by responding to the 12 itess of this scale either by filling in the blank or selecting the best suited response (i.e., strongly agree to strongly disagree) froe a five point likert-type scale. The BIg1ggntjgl_§tghjljtx_figplg_elicited inforaation concerning the nusber of tises parents had soved froe one residence to another in the past year and their length of residence in the Lansing area. The two itess on this scale required parents to respond using a fill in the blank forsat. Finally, the two itess of the Sgtigjggtjgn_§§glg,docuaented the parents' satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction with FBC services and their feelings about recossending the FBC to others. Each of these itess was presented in a fill in the blank forsat. Prior to cosputing the reliability of the five scales, the itess appearing on each scale were prepared for scale inclusion in the following aanner. First, the responses of several scale itess were re-coded in order that low scores indicated that parents 1) had aany socially supportive individuals in their life (available social support itess), 2) had a good attitude about parenting (parenting attitude scale itess), 3) had a low aeount of stress in their daily life (life stress scale itess), 4) were long-tiee residents of their present neighborhood (residential stability scale itess), and 5) were 47 satisfied with the services they received at the FBC (satisfaction 'scale itess). High scores on the response sets indicated the opposite of the low scores. Second, a Z-score trensforeation was perforeed on all itess in order to standardize the itess with different observed scales to the ease scale. The transforeed itess have a seen of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. No itess were discarded due to lack of variance. 81111111131. Iteas were selected for each of the five scales after eultiple reliability analyses indicated that they were the aost appropriate. That is, their corrected itee-total correlations were at least .25 (the critical value for a saeple of 60 at the .05 level of significance) and the spread between the highest and lowest corrected itee-total correlations within a scale did not exceed .30. Cronbach‘s alpha was then cosputed on the scales to detereine the degree of internal consistency aaong thee. Standardized itee alphas for the scales ranged froe .52 for the residential stability scale to .94 for the life stress scale (see Table 3). Table 4 shows the intercorrelations of all the scales with reliabilities appearing in the diagonals. No scale correlated with another at the .01 level of significance or higher, indicating that each are seasuring different constructs. To assess test-retest reliability six of the 60 parents in the saeple were randosly selected to cosplete the Participant Inforeation Fore, the Parental Attitude Questionnaire, and the Participant 48 Table 3 WW Corrected Iteas cosprising the scale Standardized itee-total itee alpha correlation Available social support (g_I 60) .90 .01 1. nuaber of esotional supporters .72 2. nuaber of practical assistance supporters .70 3. nuaber of advice and inforaation supporters .03 4. nuaber of cospanionship supporters .61 5. nuaber of social supporters repeated three tises .51 6. nuaber of social functions attended in the past sonth .67 7. nuaber of groups and organizations parent belongs to Parenting attitude (g_I 55) .01~ .60 1. Hhen dealing with sy children, I feel in control of sy eeotions eost of the ties. .57 2. I feel cosfortable with the way I ' discipline sy children. .42 3. I as able to take a break froe sy children when I need it. .56 4. I enjoy the ties I spend alone with ey children. .73 5. I think I's doing a good job as a parent. .45 6. I feel like ey children have a good feeling about theeselves. Life stress (g_I 57) .94 .96 1. nuaber of children who are (were) enrolled in drop-in child care at the Faeily Browth Center? 49 Table 3 (cont'd.) Corrected Iteas cosprising the scale Standardized itee-total itee alpha correlation .66 2a. attention span of second youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .75 2b. attention span of third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .74 3a. activity level of second youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .76 3b. activity level of third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .70 4a. behavioral disposition of second youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .76 4b. behavioral disposition of third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care .67 5a. Does second youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care throw teeper tantruss? .79 5b. Does third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care throw teeper tantruss? .74 6a. Does parent spank second youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care? .74 6b. Does parent spank third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care? .60 7. Sleep pattern of third youngest child who is (was) enrolled in drop-in child care. Residential stability (g_I 60) .52 .35 1. nuaber of tiees parent has soved free one residence to another in the past year .35 2. length of residence in the Lansing area 50 Table 3 (cont'd.) Corrected Itess cosprising the scale Standardized itee-total itee alpha correlation Satisfaction (g_I 50) .75 .61 1. In general, how do you feel about the services that were provided by the Faeily Browth Center? .61 2. Nould you recossend the Faeily Browth Center to others? Natl, See Appendix I for the exact wording of the scale itess, as well as other itess that appear on the research instrueents that did not qualify for scale inclusion. Table 4 W 51 Scale 1 2 3 4 FBC Parent Participants (g_I 60) 1. Available Social Support L1g_ 2. Parenting Attitude .26 ,31_ 3. Life Stress -.14 .05 ,11_ 4. Residential Stability .25 .26 .09 fill 5. Satisfaction .29 -.03 -.i9 .11 N213, Internal consistencies appear in the diagonals. 52 Satisfaction Survey a second ties. The tiee interval between the first and second adsinistration of these seasures ranged froe five to seven days. Reliability was calculated using the percent exact agreesent aethod. Nith this aethod, reliability equals the sus of the total nuaber of itess on the eeesure, sinus the sue of the nuaber of disagreesents (i.e., discrepancies in parent responses froe the first to the second adsinistration of the eeesure), divided by the total nusber of itess on the eeesure. The resulting test-retest reliability ranged free .73 to .04 with an average reliability of .79. In addition, the Structured Interviews of seven randosly selected parents were coded both by the researcher and an assistant. The resulting test-retest reliability (also assessed using the percent exact agreesent aethod) ranged froe .92 to 1.00 with an average reliability of .90. CHAPTER III RESULTS W To be presented in this section are the findings froe the five research questions that were investigated in this study as well as inforaation concerning the social support systee of the parents in the saeple, their degree of connectedness to their coeeunity, attitudes about their relationship with their child(ren), and child developeent knowledge. 1. Nho uses the services offered at the FBC? As Table 5 indicates, nearly all of the parents in the saeple are white fesales (001 and 91.71, respectively); aost of whoa are between the ages of 30 and 37 (56.71). These parents have, on the average, two children. Eighty-five percent have at least one child under the age of five years and 13.31 are presently expecting another child. Over half are sarried (60.31) and 901 have no extended faeily and/or friends residing in their household. The eajority of the parents have attended college (70.41) with the sodal response being a cospletion of four years of higher education. Nearly fifty percent are esployed in the workforce, either part-tiee or full-tiee. Seventy percent reported theeselves, spouse, or both as the prieary source of the faeily incoee, and faeily incoee for 50.31 ranged froe $001.00 to over 53 54 Table 5 Wm Variable g_ Percent Length of participation 0-3 sonths 11 10.3 4-6 sonths 7 11.7 7-9 sonths 0 13.3 10-12 sonths 10 16.7 13-15 sonths 24 40.0 Presently participating Yes 29 40.3 No 30 50.0 Missing 1 1.7 Bender Feeale 55 91.7 Nale 5 0.3 Race Asian 5 0.3 Black 3 5.0 Hispanic 3 5.0 Nhite 40 00.0 hissing 1 1.7 55 Table 5 (cont'd.) Variable n_ Percent Age 10-21 4 6.7 22-25 7 11.7 26-29 0 13.3 30-33 10 30.0 34-37 16 26.7 30-41 4 6.7 42 and older 3 5.0 Nusber of children One 21 35.0 Two 21 35.0 Three 13 21.7 Four 3 5.0 Five 1 1.7 Hissing 1 1.7 Nusber of children under age five Zero 9 15.0 One 20 46.7 Two 10 30.0 Three 5 0.3 Presently expecting a child _Yes 0 13.3 No 52 06.7 56 Table 5 (cont‘d.) Variable Percent Marital status Single Separated Divorced Harried FOLIO Size of household Two Three Four Five Six or sore 10 12 22 12 Educational level Less than high school High school graduate Soae college College graduate - Missing $040- presence 0 N-bOOe-o Nusber of extended faeily/friends residing in hose Zero One Two Four up... keno-O \INNO 57 Table 5 (cont'd.) Variable 1, Percent Esploysent status Unesployed 31 51.7 Part-tiee or Occasional 10 30.0 Full-tiee 11 10.3 Prieary source of incoee Esploysent of self, spouse, or both 42 70.0 Parents 2 3.3 Public assistance 11 10.3 Other 4 6.7 Nissing 1 1.7 Faeily incoee Under S500/sonth 12 20.0 8501 to 8000/sonth 11 10.3 8001 to 51,1001sonth 9 15.0 81,101 and Over/sonth 26 43.3 Nissing 2 3.3 How parent learned about the FBC Friend 29 40.3 Relative 4 6.7 Co-worker 1 1.7 Professional in the coeeunity 0 13.0 Acquaintance 2 3.3 Brochure/pasphlet 10 16.7 Other 4 6.7 Missing 2 3.3 58 $1,101.00 per sonth. Additional deeographic inforaation reveals that parents in the study were aost coseonly referred to the FBC by a friend (40.31) or they learned about the services through a brochure or pasphlet (16.71). At the ties the researcher visited each parent half reported that they were no longer actively receiving services at the FBC. Though not foreally docusented in the research, parents gave a variety of reasons for their inactivity at the FBC. For exaaple, children had reached the age at which they were ineligible to receive drop-in child care (age six), lack of ties due to enrollsent in higher education courses, taking a part-tiee or full-tiee job, scheduling conflicts, the inconvenience of the first-cose-first-served drop-in child care policy. In sue, it appears that the prieary consuaers of FBC services tend to be white fesales who are sarried, well educated, between the ages of 30 and 37 with an average of two children. Their sonthly faeily incoee ranged froe $001.00 to over $1,101.00 and aany, though not the eajority, are esployed either on a part-tiee or full-tiee basis. At the ties of data collection half of the parents in the saeple indicated that they were not currently participating in the services at the FBC. 2. Hhich FBC services do parents use and how often? The FBC services investigated for this project were respite (or drop-in) child care, parent education, and parent support group. Frequency of service use was docusented in two sanners. The first was based on 59 parent report and the second on the actual attendance records kept by the FBC staff. Eighty percent of the parents reported that they had not used the parent support group service at all during the four week period prior to the researcher's visit. Additionally, of the 12 parents who did indicate support group attendance, the average nuaber of sessions attended was four. The zero usage figure reported by sost parents closely approxiaates the support group attendance figures docusented by the FBC staff. Their records showed that 06.71 of the parents had not attended any of the support group sessions during the previous four weeks. Of those who had, the average nuaber attended was three. Ten parents reported participating in an educational class during the designated four week tiee period. They had attended an average of five classes during the previous sonth. This cospares to the 03.31 who had received no fore of parent education. The FBC records substantiated parent reported use of parent education classes: 10.31 (g_I 11) had attended an average of five classes. Twenty-eight parents reported that their children had used the respite child care service during the last four weeks. The average nuaber of visits was four. Again, FBC records corroborated the respite child care attendance figures reported by the parents: 26 parents brought their children to the respite child care prograa approxiaately three tiees each. The tgtgl_nuebsr of FBC services parents used during the designated period ranged froe zero for 51.71 of the parents to 19 for 60 1.71 of the parents, according to FBC records. The average nuaber of services used was three. In sue, of the three FBC services investigated in this study, the respite child care service was used aost frequently by parents over the designated four week period while the parent support group service and parent education classes were seldos used. Additionally, usage figures for each of the three services as reported by parents and as docusented by the FBC staff were nearly identical. 3. Nhat reasons do parents give for using FBC services? The reasons parents gave for registering for services were broken down into seven general categories: self-isprovesent, respite, child- related, practical assistance, esotional support, task cospletion, and quality of service. Before proceeding to an exasination of the results, it should be noted that parents were allowed to give eultiple responses to the four itess querying this research question. As a result, the reported percentages do not add to 1001. Thirty-nine percent of the parents eentioned self-isproveeent as the reason they initially began to use services at the FBC (e.g., to attend FBC parent education classes); 301 were in need of respite (e.g., to give theeselves a break froe their children and vice versa); 301 gave child-related reasons (e.g., to give children an opportunity to play with other children); and 301 sought practical assistance (e.g., needed a child care provider). Exasination of specific services revealed that parents becase involved in the support group service to obtain esotional support 61 (251) and to isprove theeselves, for exaaple, by taking the advice offered by other parents (161). Forty percent of the responding parents, however, indicated that they had never participated in an FBC parent support group. The eajor reason given by 551 of the parents for participating in the parent education classes was self-isproveeent (e.g., to learn better parenting skills). Thirty percent reported no past or present involvesent in an FBC parent education class. All indicated that they had used the respite child care service at one tiee or another. A variety of reasons were given for using this service. Twenty-two percent reported that they used the service when they attended an FBC class; 431 used it truly for respite, that is, they left their children with a child Care provider when they needed a break free the children or vice versa; 521 focused on the child- related benefits of the service (e.g., it gave the children an opportunity to play with other children); 131 needed seasons to care for their children while they cospleted tasks such as, running errands and keeping appointsents; finally, 311 coseented the quality of the service (e.g., high quality, inexpensive, and reliable). As indicated above, parents began using the FBC, in general, and the parent support group service, parent education classes, and respite Child care service, in particular, for a variety of reasons. For aany, self-isproveeent was an isportant factor that sotivated thee to participate at the FBC as well as the opportunity to provide sore play experiences for their children and to receive respite froe child lele 62 4. How satisfied are parents with the services received froe the FBC? Exasination of responses to the question, 'In general, how do you feel about the services that were provided by the Faeily Browth Center?‘ revealed that the eajority of the parents were either very satisfied (71.71) or soeewhat satisfied (21.7) with the services they had received. The dissatisfaction soee parents expressed about the FBC focused, for the seat part, on the eanner in which it was operated. For exaaple, aany thought that the three centers should be open for longer hours and on sore days and that the first-cose-first- served drop-in child care policy was too inconvenient. Also, 96.71 indicated that they would recossend the FBC to others. See Table 6 for a list of areas in which parents felt that the FBC had been helpful and not helpful to thee. In sue, even though soee of the parents cited areas at the FBC that they believed needed isproveeent (e.g., various operational policies) sost were satisfied with services and stated that they would recossend the FBC to others. Win The reeainder of this section will focus on the additional descriptive inforaation obtained on the saeple (i.e., their social support network, degree of connectedness to the coeeunity, attitudes about parent-child relationships, and child developeent knowledge) as well as the findings froe the fifth research question that was investigated in this study. Parents were asked to respond to four social support itess 63 Table 6 Walnuts). Area 1 Helped 1 Not Helped FBC Parent Participants (g_I 60) Drop-in child care 02 5 Child care/child developeent skills 43 10 Social interaction/support with other parents 43 12 Understanding child's needs and abilities 40 0 Norries about parenting 30 12 Recreational outlet 33 17 Difficulties handling sy infant/child 20 13 Continuing education 15 10 Other 13 3 Developing job skills/finding a job 7 30 None of the above 0 40 I011: These itess were presented as two questions in a eultiple choice forsat, therefore, the percentages do not add to 1001. 64 designed to exasine various characteristics of individuals they designated as support network aeebers. Investigation of these itess indicated that the average nuaber of eeotional supporters nased was six. These eeotional supporters are those individuals who parents believed would listen to their troubles, cosfort thee, and share their life experiences with thee. Forty percent of the sectional supporters nased were friends and 401 were relatives. Over half of the parents had one person living in their hose whos they categorized as an eeotional supporter. Additional inforaation about the people naeed as eeotional supporters included: 70.31 were fesale, the average age of the youngest naeed eeotional supporter was 27.4 years, and 55 years was the average age of the oldest naeed eeotional supporter. The average nusber of practical assistance providers was five. Relatives (43.31) were eost often nased as the people parents turned to when they needed seasons to perfore services such as running errands, babysitting, and lending eoney. Friends provided these services for 401 of the saeple. Fifty percent of the parents had no practical assistance providers living in their households and 451 had one person so designated residing in their hose. Feeales were nased by 60.31 of the parents as providers of practical assistance and the average ages of the youngest and oldest nased practical assistance providers were 29 and 52 years, respectively. Advice and inforaation providers are those individuals who give advice on how to solve problees as well as give suggestions on where to get needed inforsation. The average nuaber of advice and 65 inforaation supporters reported was four. Friends (43.31), relatives, (23.31), and professionals in the coeeunity (11.71) were the people aost frequently naeed as advice and inforaation providers. Further investigation revealed that 451 of the parents had only one advice and inforaation supporter living in their hose. Nearly 651 of advice and inforaation providers were feeale. The average age of the youngest nased advice and inforaation provider was 31 years, with the oldest provider having an average age of 52 years. Parents reported having an average of five individuals in their lives with whoe they spent tiee engaged in activities such as talking, shopping, and going to the sovies. Friends (36.71) and relatives (36.71) were aost often nased as coepanionship supporters. Aleost 541 indicated that two coepanionship supporters lived in their household and 33.31 reported having none residing with thee. Additionally, fesales were aost often nased as coepanionship supporters (76.71) and the average ages of the youngest and oldest nased coepanionship supporters were 23 and 46 years, respectively. Twenty percent of the parents reported knowing one person who sade their lives sore difficult (i.e., a negative supporter), while 23.31 nased no one to this category. The average nuaber of negative supporters naeed was two. The sost frequently nased negative supporters were relatives (46.71). Nearly 571 stated that no negative supporters lived in the faeily hose. Feeales were nased as negative supporters sore often (41.71). The average age of the youngest and oldest nased negative supporters was 15 and 45, respectively. 66 In sue, the investigation of the parents' social support network revealed that seat were able to nase at least one individual as a provider of positive support in each of the four social support categories and at least one individual in the negative support category. Both the positive and negative supporters tended to be characterized as fesale, relatives or friends, and of various ages. To detereine whether support specialists and generalists were present in the parents‘ support network, their responses to the above social support itess were subjected to further analysis. For each parent, the individuals nased as providers of the four kinds of support was reviewed. Each individual who was listed as providing only one of the four kinds of support was counted by hand and recorded. These individuals were then designated as support specialists. In addition, individuals who were listed as providers of two, three, and four kinds of support were each counted and recorded. They were designated as support generalists. It was found that 001 of parents nased an average of 2.7 network aeebers (range, 1 to 10) as providers of only one kind of support. Nearly 771 indicated that they received two kinds of support froe an average of 2 network aeebers (range, 1 to 7); an average of 1.06 network aeebers (range, 1 to 9) were naeed by 701 as providers of three kinds of support; and 751 reported an average of 2.21 network aeebers (range, 1 to 10) as providers of four kinds of support. These findings revealed the presence of support specialists and generalists in the parents' support networks. 67 Approxisately 671 of the parents reported that they had not soved froe their present place of residence during the 12 sonth period prior to data collection. Aleost 641 have resided in the Lansing area for six or sore years, and 63.31 believe they are quite aware of agencies and groups in the area that provide services for parents and children. An investigation of parental perception of the nature of their interactive experiences with their children was also conducted. Nith the exception of two parents, all reported that they enjoyed the ties they spent alone with their children. Nearly 921 felt in control of their eeotions when dealing with their children. Aleost 221 were concerned about their behavior when angered by their children. Seventy percent reported that there were tiees when their children deeanded too such froe thee. Ninety-five percent indicated that there were tiees when they needed a break froe child care responsibilities. Sixty-five percent stated that they were actually able take a break free their children when needed. Host of the parents (g_I 47) felt overwhelsed to soee degree by their children (e.g., 0.31 infrequently, 40.31 sosetises, 0.31 often, and 1.71 all of the ties). Nearly 021 felt that they were doing a good job raising their children. As indicated above, aost of the parents reported enjoying interacting with their children and believe that they are doing a good job as a parent. They also acknowledged, however, that there were tiees when they felt overwhelsed by child care responsibilities and needed to (and were able to) take a break froe their children. In the area of finances, 53.31 of the parents stated that they 68 needed sore eoney to sake ends east at hose and 36.61 reported that they did not have enough eoney to take good care of their children. Nearly 621 indicated that they had no trouble finding a babysitter and 621 also reported that they did not worry when soseone else was taking care of their child(ren). Two-thirds of the parents stated that their sate (spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend) helped out “slot“ with their children. Aleost 441 reported receiving no child care assistance froe faeily aeebers (both issediate and extended, excluding their sate). To assess parents' beliefs about child developeent they were asked a series of questions concerning the age that a child would be capable of handling various tasks and understanding a sieple coseand. In the area of toilet training, there were 25 parents in the saeple (41.71) who gave responses within the 10 to 24 sonth range as the optisal age to begin toilet training. Of the resaining parents, 401 stated the range to be 25 to 45 sonths and 9.5 to 15 sonths (11.71). Nhen asked the age at which a child should know what it seans when told “no,“ 16.71 of the parents stated between seven and eleven sonths of age; 3.31 thought that a child was capable of understanding this coesand at age six sonths; and the eajority (71.71) reported responses between 12 and 36 sonths. Fifty percent of the saeple stated that a child should be able to sleep through the whole night by six sonths of age but no later than twelve sonths. Nearly 191 indicated birth to five sonths as the age range and 20.11 stated between 15 and 40 sonths. 69 Nhen asked at what age a child could stay alone for an hour or so during the afternoon five percent of the parents reported age four (i.e., preschool age); 50.11 stated between age six and ten and a half (elesentary school age); and 41.01 reported between the ages of 11 and 14 (junior high school and older). 5. Nhat is the relation asong the three FBC service types and the five parent variables? Prior to perforsing Spearaan correlational analyses (a nonparasetric test of correlation) to detereine the extent to which the three services provided by the FBC (i.e., parent education, parent support groups, and respite child care) were related to the five parent variables of interest (i.e., available social support, parenting attitude, life stress, residential stability, and satisfaction with FBC services), parent reported responses of the frequency with which they used the three services over the past four weeks were re-coded as dichotoeous variables. That is, if parents reported that they had used a particular FBC service at least once over the past four weeks they were given a re-coded score of 00. If they reported that they had not used a particular service at all in the past four weeks they were given a re-coded score of 01. The results presented in Table 7 revealed two significant positive Spearaan correlations based on parent report of service use between parent education service usage and satisfaction with FBC services (g,< .05) and respite child care service usage and available social support (g_< .05). The foreer correlation indicates that those parents who use the parent education service sore frequently also tend Table 7 W W Service Types Scale Parent Education Parent Support Broup Respite Child Care I. 2. 3. FBC Parent Participants (g_I 60) Available Social Support .10 Parenting Attitude -.01 Life Stress .00 Residential Stability .07 Satisfaction .26! .02 s31* -e39 '.09 ”.05 -s07 .09 .09 .11 .19 Ig,( .05, two tailed. 71 to be sore satisfied with the service offerings at the FBC. The latter correlation indicates that those parents who use the respite child care service sore frequently also tend to have sore social supporters in their support network. Spearaan correlational analyses were also perforeed on the parent service usage figures reported by the FBC for the four week period prior to data collection. These figures were also rs-coded as dichotoeous variables (00 I use of at least one service; 01 I no services were used). The results presented in Table 0 revealed that a significant positive relation existed between respite child care service usage and available social support (g_< .01). This correlation suggests that those parents who were reported (through FBC records) to have used the respite child care service sore frequently also tended to have sore social supporters in their support network Although the opportunity existed to find as aany as thirty significant relationships between the five parent variables of interest and service usage patterns (based both on parent report and FBC official report), only three were obtained. More specifically, the Spearaan correlational analysis perforeed on parent report of service usage and the five parent variables produced two significant positive correlations while the ease analysis based on FBC official report of parent service usage yielded one significant positive correlation. Since the nuaber of relationships obtained is quite ssall, and could have resulted froe chance, any interpretations sade sust be considered with caution. Table 0 . . _ : ‘ : Scale Service Types Parent Education 1 Parent Support Broup Respite Child Care I. 2. 3. 4. FBC Parent Participants (g_I 60) Available Social Support .04 Parenting Attitude -.01 Life Stress .17 Residential Stability .07 Satisfaction .20 -so7 s37" -s06 "e05 .07 '.19 “.03 s22 .12 .23 ftp < .01, two tailed. CHAPTER IV DISCUSSION Parent participation in the thrge types of services offered at the FBC was investigated. The services were parent support group, parent education, and respite child care. Overall participation in these services was low. During the four week period prior to data collection half the parents reported that they were no longer actively receiving services at the FBC. This reported lack of participation is in agreesent with the findings that revealed that 001 of the parents reported that they had not participated in the parent support group service (FBC official report indicated that 06.71 had not attended) and 03.31 stated that they had not taken part in any fore of parent education (per FBC report, this figure is 01.71) during the designated four week period. In contrast to the relatively inactive usage patterns for the above two services, parents were sore actively‘ involved in the respite child care service. Nearly 471 reported that they had used the service at least once during the designated four week period (FBC report revealed a supporting figure of 441). Parent report and FBC official report of service usage was significantly, positively correlated (g,< .05 for parent support group attendance and g_< .001 for both parent education and respite child care participation). 73 74 Inquiries into the reasons why parents use (or used) FBC services revealed a variety of responses. These included self-isproveeent (e.g., to enhance their knowledge of children and parenting), to receive respite froe child care, child-related reasons (e.g., to give the children an opportunity to play with other children), practical assistance (e.g., needed low cost child care), to receive eeotional support (e.g., through the parent support group), task cospletion (e.g., running errands and doing housework while children were in respite care), and for the high quality of service provided by FBC staff. Although the vast eajority of the parents were either very satisfied or soeewhat satisfied with the services they had received, aany also expressed that they would like to see the FBC's three center locations open for longer hours and en'sore days during the week and wanted staff to change the procedure for adeitting children into respite child care (i.e., revise the first-cose-first-served policy). Additionally, nearly 1001 indicated that they would recossend the FBC to others. Parents naeed a total of 514 individuals as providers of social support. The average nuaber of supporters cosprising their support network was 0.5 (range, 2 to 20). Here specifically, in the areas of eeotional support, practical assistance, advice and inforaation, and coepanionship it was found that the average nuaber of supportive individuals naeed by parents was 5.5, 4.7, 4.1, and 4.9, respectively. Nhen these figures are coapared with the findings froe other studies 75 investigating support network size it appears that the average nuaber of individuals nased is of adequate size. For exaaple, a general survey of the social support networks of 1531 individuals was conducted by Marsden (1907). In response to the question querying the nuaber of support individuals with whoa subjects had discussed “setters of isportance“ within the past six sonths it was found that they nased an average of three individuals and their responses ranged froe zero to six. Although a focus on quality, as opposed to quantity, say be a better way to assess the potency of support network relationships, the child abuse and neglect literature indicates that ssall networks that do not provide various kinds of support say place parents at greater risk to abuse their children (Barbarino, 1977; Belles A Cornell, 1905; Powell, 1900). The results of the correlational analysis that was perforeed (to detereine what relations, if any, existed between the five parent variables of interest and the three FBC services) revealed that frequency of respite child care service usage (per parent report as well as FBC official report) was significantly positively correlated with available social support (g,( .05 per parent report and g_< .01 per FBC official report). This suggests that less frequent use of the respite child care service was significantly positively related to having fewer available social supporters. An individual's social support network say be inadequate when there are few friends, faeily, etc., with whoa to interact. This is especially true if seas of the 76 supporters in the seall network do not provide sore than one kind of support. In support of this contention, it was found that a subsasple of parents (g,I 20) had support networks coeprised of fewer than 0.5 aeebers (0.5 was the average network size for the entire saeple). In addition, 14 in this subsasple had support networks in which 501 or sore of the aeebers were support specialists (i.e., providers of one kind of support). However, only one-third of these support specialists provided practical assistance (e.g., respite froe child care). Although these findings indicated that soee parents have seall support networks and do not have access to supporters who provide services like child care, 56 parents (93.31) failed to identify the F00 as a source of practical assistance. Additionally, nearly 541 reported that they had not used the FBC respite child care service over the designated four week period prior to data collection. Since a lack of available social support and failure to take advantage of available social support have been found to be related to social isolation (Barbarino, 1977) and social isolation has, in turn, been found to be related to child abuse and neglect (Barbarino, 1977), parents who isolate theeselves froe agencies and individuals who could help thee alleviate seas of the stress they say be feeling say be at greater risk to abuse their children if their threshold of tolerance is surpassed (Barbarino, 1977; Belles A Cornell, 1905). Finally, a significant positive correlation was found to exist between parent reported use of the parent education service and satisfaction with FBC services (p,< .05). This correlation suggests 77 that a low rate of participation in the parent education service is related to less satisfaction with all services offered at the FBC. It is only natural to assuee that not all parents will have a high regard for the FBC for various reasons, therefore, their lower rate of participation can be understood. However, approxiaately 041 of the saeple reported that they had not attended a parent education class during the four week period prior to data collection and within this percentage group there say be parents with poor parenting attitudes and inadequate child developeent knowledge. Evidence in support of this contention was found in parents' responses to various questions querying their parenting attitudes and knowledge of child developeent. For exaaple, concerning parenting attitudes, 93.31 (g_I 56) agreed or strongly agreed that parenting is a tough job; 76.71 (g_I 46) agreed or strongly agreed that sosetiees they did not think that they were doing everything that they can for their children; 301 (n,I 10) disagreed or strongly disagreed that they were able to take a break froe their children when they need to; 251 (g_I 15) disagreed or strongly disagreed that they had a good idea of what children are like at different stages of their developeent; and 23.31 (g_I 14) disagreed or strongly disagreed that they feel that they are aware of agencies and groups in the area that offer services for parents and children. In terss of child developeent knowledge, 71.71 (g,I 43) reported that it was not until a child is between 12 and 36 sonths that s/he should know what it seans when told “No,“ (7 to 11 sonths is the optisal age, according to the Princeton Center for Infancy and Early Childhood, 78 1970); 511 (g_I 31) either over-estieated (25 to 45 sonths) or under- estisated (9.5 to 15 sonths) the optisal age (10 to 24 sonths) at which to begin toilet training (Levine, 1973); and 20.11 (g,I 12) over-estieated (15 to 40 sonths) and 191 (g_I 11) under-estieated the optisal age (6 to 12 sonths) at which a child should be able to sleep through the whole night (Levine, 1973). Therefore, if these parents who are in need of the parent education service are not very satisfied with the FCC gng_have not becoee involved with other coeeunity agencies or individuals (social isolation) who can assist thee in changing any sisconceptions they say have about the physical and eeotional developeent of children and enhancing their parenting skill, their potential for directing abusive actions toward their children say be greater (Frank A Rowe, 1901; Steele and Pollock, 1960). Although there is no research conclusively linking short-tere coapetency snhancesent and long-tars prevention of child abuse (Resnick, 1905; Rosenberg A Reppucci, 1905) there are individuals who strongly believe that parents who learn correct inforaation about the abilities and needs of children decrease the risk of abusing their children (Boisvert, 1972; Frank A Rowe, 1977; Michigan Departeent of Social Services, 1904). Although three significant correlations were observed between parent use of services (per parent report and FBC attendance records) and the parent variables, the nuaber of relationships is quite seall (i.e., 3 out of 30) and could have resulted by chance. Nhen considering the content of the preceding interpretations, then, 79 considerable caution sust be exercised. W Hith the assortsent of services offered by the Faeily Browth Center to Lansing area parents, it was quite surprising to learn that so few of the registered parents were actively participating. Hhile parents sade little use of the support group and education services, they sore frequently utilized the respite child care service. Nhat reason(s) could explain this obvious inequality in service usage patterns? Although correlational analysis found that parents who were less satisfied with the overall service offerings at the FBC tended to use the parent education service less often, evidence was also obtained that indicated that the eajority of parents were not displeased with the parent education service. There were only two parents in the saeple who expressed a concern in this area. In response to the question, “Nhich Faeily Browth Center services have you been dissatisfied with and why?“, one parent stated that education classes were needed that focused on specific stages of a child's developeent and the other indicated that sore variety was needed in the educational classes offered. There were no negative coseents sade concerning the parent support group service. Ironically, the vast eajority of the responses focused on dissatisfaction with the respite child care service, especially the inconvenience of the first-cose- first-served drop-in child care policy. Additional evidence disputing the notion that parents were 80 displeased with the support group and educational services, and thus did not participate in thee, is that 93.41 reported theeselves to be satisfied (either very or soeewhat) with the services provided by the FBC. If parents were not dissatisfied with the parent support group and education services, why then was their overall rate of participation not higher? Two hypotheses say explain these results. One is based on the assusption that the current saeple is representative of the larger FBC parent population and the other on the assusption that the current saeple is not representative. First, there are two types of parent populations eligible to receive services at the Faeily Browth Center, those parents considered to be at risk to abuse (e.g., isolated froe foreal and inforsal support networks, experiencing a great deal of stress) as well as those who are sore well-functioning (e.g., individuals who already have at least adequate parenting and coping skills but say need periodic assistance when crises arise). If the current saeple is representative, the low service usage figures could lead one to conclude that sany of the parents in the present saeple fall into the “sore well-functioning“ category and, as a result, they have no need to participate at the Faeily Browth Center on a sore regular basis. If this were the case, it eight isply that the FBC is serving a population that can sanage without its services rather than a population truly in need of on-going services. Second, if the obtained saeple is not representative, the low 81 service usage figures say not reflect the actual pattern of service usage for a truly randos saeple of FBC participants. There is support that this latter hypothesis say be the sore appropriate of the two froe which to sake statesents about the data. For exaaple, there were 140 telephone calls placed to parents during the recruitsent phase of this study. Fifty of these parents declined participation (a 341 rejection rate) and 30 (261) could not be contacted for a variety of reasons (e.g., eoving and leaving no forwarding address or telephone nuaber). It is unclear how, or even if, these parents who were elieinated froe the study would have changed the deeographic coeposition of the saeple and service usage pattern had they been included. However, due to the fairly high rejection rate and inability to sake contact with aany of the parents, it is best to desonstrate caution and assuee that the current saeple say be different froe the actual FBC parent population. Additional support for the hypothesis that the current saeple say not be representative coses when their deeographic characteristics are coapared to those of participants in other drop-in center progress. As reported previously, the vast eajority of parents in the current saeple were sarried, white, fesales between the ages of 30 and 37. On the average, they had two children, one of whos was under the age of five. They were college educated or had soee college experience. A large percentage reported theeselves, spouse, or both as the prieary source of the faeily incoee and their faeily incoee was $1,101.00 and over per sonth. Unfortunately, only lieited deeographic 82 isforsation (i.e., race, faeily type, and incoee) was available concerning the actual population served by the Faeily Browth Center. The existing deeographic inforaation does, however, indicate that like the saeple the eajority of the parents who utilize FBC services are white (531, N I 339 feeiliss) and sarried (501, N I 419 individuals). In addition, nearly 301 are single wosen (N I 419 individuals) who are the sole heads of their households and based on a faeily size of three, 771 (N I 300 feeiliss) had a sonthly incoee under 81,255.00. However, based on the researcher's experience eonitoring child abuse and neglect prevention progress sisilar to the Faeily Browth Center, it can be said that the current saeple and the larger FBC parent population do not fit the description of the parents who typically utilize the services of these kinds of agencies. For exaaple, coeparison of the deeographic characteristics of the Faeily Browth Center saeple in the current study with those of eight drop-in centers funded by the Nichigan Children's Trust Fund (the child abuse and neglect prevention funding agency that the researcher is affiliated with) during fiscal year 1906-07 revealed soee differences. Serving a total of 021 parents, the CTF data revealed that 541 of the parents served were black, 401 were white, and 101 coeprised the “other“ category. Based on responses froe 401 of the parents, it was found that for 541 their prieary source of incoee was public assistance and the sonthly incoee for 691 was less than $000.00. A such larger percentage of teenage aothers were represented in the CTF saeple than in the saeple of the current study. This could be one 83 reason to explain why nearly 671 of the parents were single aothers and why 261 had less than a high school education. The average age of the parents was 25 and 501 had sore than one child. In conclusion, the present study was an attespt to sake inforaation available concerning one type of child abuse and neglect prevention prograa -- the drop-in center -- since there is very little inforaation in the child abuse and neglect literature describing its functioning, the services offered, and the population(s) served. Methodological deficiencies, however, interfered with the full achievesent of this goal. Specifically, the current saeple say not be representative of the larger population froe which it was attained. In order to resediate the short-cosings of the present study, a second research study should be conducted at the Faeily Browth Center. The research sethodology of the second study should concentrate on obtaining a randos and representative saeple. This is isperative if one seeks to sake stateeents about the data that are generalizable to the larger Faeily Browth Center parent population (or other sisilar drop-in center populations). It would also be helpful if data (i.e., deeographic inforaation) could be obtained free the parents who decline participation. This inforaation could then be coapared to the saeple to detereine whether there are differences between those who consent to participate and those who do not. Finally, acquiring a saeple larger than 60 would greatly increase the precision of the obtained population estieates. Although the current saeple say not be representative of the 84 larger FBC parent population, a wealth of inforaation was revealed about thee concerning who they are, the services they use, the reasons for service use, and their satisfaction with services received. Also investigated were the relations that exist between five parent variables and parent service usage patterns. Several of the Spearaan correlational analyses suggested that soee of the parents in the saeple say be experiencing social isolation, stress, and have inadequate child developeent knowledge. These three factors have each been ieplicated in the literature as potential contributors to events of child abuse (Boisvert, 1972; Frank A Rowe, 1901; Barbarino, 1977; Belles A Cornell, 1905; Hichigan Departeent of Social Services, 1904). Since only seall percentages of parents had participated in the three FBC services over the four week period prior to data collection, it is hoped that those who were not currently participating, but who are in need of services, will return to the FBC or seek other coeeunity resource agencies or support individuals to help thee 1) reduce their feelings of stress in order that they not take their frustrations out on their children, 2) enhance their knowledge and understanding about child developeent so that inappropriate expectations about what children are capable of doing will not lead to abuse, and 3) widen their social support network and increase involvesent in coeeunity activities in order to reduce feelings of social isolation which say lead to abuse when one is not able to cospare one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to those of other's. 85 W Although the drop-in center concept is gaining sore popularity as a child abuse and neglect intervention strategy, the paucity of inforaation on the topic in the child abuse and neglect literature indicates that sore research is needed. Not only is research needed that describes how various drop-in centers function, the types of services they offer, and the population(s) they serve (as was the case in the current exploratory study), but that which assesses the efficacy of the different service types and evaluates the extent to which participation in services effects the long-tars prevention of child abuse and neglect is also needed. The isportance of designing and conducting evaluation studies with these kinds of objectives is evident in wake of the finding reported in a 1902 review of child abuse prieary and secondary prevention progress (reported in Select Cosaittee on Children, Youth, and Faeilies: House of Representatives, 1907). It was found that authors in only 151 of the articles actually evaluated the degree of iepact prevention progress had on reducing child abuse. And in the eajority of the studies that have evaluated ispact, the general consensus is that no conclusive evidence has yet been obtained that clearly shows that prevention progress reduce the incidence of child abuse (e.g., Bray, Cutler, Dean, A Keeps, 1979; Cabinet, 1979; Siegel, Bauean, Schaffer, Saunders, A Ingres, 1900). Even though these findings say be discouraging, continued effort in the area of evaluation will eventually reveal to child abuse and neglect prevention researchers 86 and prograa staff whether interventions such as those offered by drop- in centers are having the desired effect on the population(s) receiving services. REFERENCES REFERENCES Adasakos, H., Ryan, K., Ullsan, D. 0., Pascoes, J., Diaz, R., A Chessare, J. (1906). Maternal social support as a predictor of sother-child stress and stiaulation. Chilg_fihagg_gnfl_fl1111£1, 11, 463-470. Alvy, K. T. (1975). Preventing Child Abuse. algpjggn_figxgnglggjgtd 3.1, 921-927. Aeerican Husane Association (1970). National Analysis of Official Child Neglect and Abuse Reporting. Denver, Colorado. Aeerican Husane Association (1904). Highlights of official child neglect and abuse reporting 1902. Denver, Colorado. Belsky, J. (1900). Child ealtreateent: An ecological integration. W. 3.5.. 320-335- Belsky, J. (1904). The detersinants of parenting: A process aodel. W. 3.5.. 03-96. Bloos, H. (1900). A working definition of prieary prevention related to social concerns. In Milton Nobel (Ed.), finjgggx_gggxgntign_1n, WW NY: Council on Social Hark Education. Bogat, 0. A., Caldwell, R. A., Rogasch, F. A., A Kriegler, J. A. (1905). Differentiating specialists and generalists within college students' sunport network» MW. 11. 23-25. Boisvert, N. J. (1972). The battered child syndroee. Sggjgl_ Cement. 13.. 475-480. Burgdorf, K. (1900). Recognition and reporting of child ealtreateent: Findings free the National Study of the Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect. Prepared for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Nashington, D.C. rCobb, S. (1976). Social support as a aoderator of life stress. Walnuts. 3.0.. 300-314. 87 88 Cochran, N. M., A 0assard, J. A. (1979). Child developeent and personal social networks. §n111_ngxglgglgn34 52, 601-616. Collette, N. D. (1979). Support systeas after divorce: Incidence and lunch W. 1.1.. 837-846- Colletta, N. D., A Bregg, C. H. (1901). Adolescent sothers' vulnerability to “run MW. 151, 250-54. Crittenden, P. M. (1903). The effect of eandatory protective daycare on sutual attachsent in saltreating sother-infant dyads. Chill. W: 7.. 297-300. Davidson, A. T. (1977). Child abuse: Causes and prevention. WW. Al. 917420- Egeland, 0., A Brunquell, D. (1979). An at-risk approach to the study of child abuse: Sose prelisinary findings. Jgggn31_gi_tng, WM. 10.. 219-235. Egeland, 0., A Vaughn, 0. (1901). Failure of “bond foreation“ as a cause of abuse, neglect, and ealtreateent. Agggiggn_JggLngl_gi. W. 51.. 78-34- Elser, E. (1967). cnjlgngn_nn_jgggpngx, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ‘ Elster, A. 0., McAnarney, E. R., A Laeb, N. E. (1903). Parental behavior of adolescent aothers. figgjgtgjgjd 11, 494-503. Fontana, V. J. (1900). Child abuse: Prevention in the teen-age lunat- WW. 0.. 53-56- Frank, E., A Rowe, D. A. (1901). Prieary prevention: Parent education, sother-infant groups in a general hospital setting. WW. 1.. 169-17B- Friedrich, N. N., A Boriskin, J. A. (1976). The role of the child in abuse: A review of the literature. Agggjggn_1gg;ggl_gj_ W. 16.. 560-590- Babinst, L. (1979). Prevention of child abuse and neglect in an inner-city population: The prograa and the results. Qn111_egggg, mm. 3.. 009-017. Barbarino, J. (1977). The huean ecology of child ealtreateent: A conceptual Ind-1 for run")!- WW. :1, 721-735. 89 Barbarino, J. (1903). Nhat we know about child ealtreateent. WW. 5.. 3-6. Belles, R. J. (1976). Desythologizing child abuse. Ing_figgjlx_ W. 21.. 135-141- Belles, R. J., A Cornell, C. P. (1905). 13513.11_1131;n;;_1n, fgpiliqj, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Chapters 1 A 3. 011, D. 0. (1970). Ln_thg_fln1tgg_fitgtgg, Caebridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bil, D. 0. (1973). Caebridge, HA: Schenkean Publishing Co. 011, D. 0. (1977). Child abuse: Levels of eanifestation, causal dieensions, and prieary prevention. Vigtjlglggx, (21, 106-194. Bottlieb, B. H. (1901). Preventive interventions involving social networks and social support. In Bottlieb, 0. H. (Ed.), fig§1g1_ Wench Beverly Hills. CA: Sas- 0ray,'J. D., Cutler, C. A., Dean, J. C., A Keeps, C. H. (1979). Prediction and prevention of child abuse and neglect. JggLng1_g1_ W. 3.1. 12043"- Brodner, B. (1977). A faeily systeas approach to treataent of child abuse: Etiology and intervention. 1ggnngl_g1_§1ipjggl_§nilg_ mm. 6.. 32-35. Helfer, R. E., Keeps, C. H. (1960). Ing_ggjtgggg_5njlg, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Helfer, R. E. (1970). A plan for protection: The child abuse mm. W. :1. 486-494. Henderson, 5. (1900). A developeent in social psychiatry: The systeeatic study of social bonds. JggLn11_91_Ng;vggg_gng_ngntgL We All: 63-69e Hirsch, 0. J. (1900). Natural support systeas and coping with eajor life chins-h WW. 0.. 159-172. Holleean, a. A. (1903). Treatsent of the child. In N. a. Ebling end n. A. Hill (Eds.), . Littleton, HA: John Nright PSO Inc. Kadushin, A., A Hartin, J. A. (1901). Qn11g_ghggg;__fin_jntggggtigngl_ 9O gxgnt, NY: Coluebia University Press. UVMMH- ”9731- WWW WI.- NY: Harp-TAR“- Light, R. J. (1973). Abused and neglected children in Aserica: A study of alternative policies. ugL11;g_§gugjtignel_flgxignn 43, 556-590. Lowenthal, H. F., A Haven, C. (1906). Interaction and adaptation: Intisacy as a critical variable. ag3L1sgn_§g§131231§11_311112..33, 20-30. Harsden, P. V. (1907). Core discussion networks of Aeericans. WM. 5.2. 122 131- Hichigan Children's Trust Fund. (1906). The Participant Inforeation Fore and the Parental Attitude Questionnaire for Neighborhood Based Faeily Resource Center Progress. (Available froe Craig Brookins, Children's Trust Fund, P. O. Box 30026, Lansing, MI 40909). Hichigan Departeent of Social Services. (1904). Nhat everyone should know about child abuse and neglect. South Deerfield, NA: Channing L. Bets Co., Inc. Hiller, F., A Inghae, J. B. (1976). Friends, confidante, and “Into“- W. 1.1... 51‘59- Newberger, E. N., Haepton, R. L., Marx, T. J., A Nhite, K. H. (1906). Child abuse and pediatric social illness: An epidesiological analysis and ecological reforsulation. Appliggn_1gg;ngl_gi_ Win... 5.6.. 509-601. Pascoes, J., Loda, F., Jefferies, V., A Earp, J. (1901). The association between sothers' social support and provision of stiaulation to their children. Qg1g1ggggntg1_gng_figh‘xig;‘1_ mum. 2. 1549- Powell, D. R. (1900). Personal social networks as a focus for prieary prevention of child ealtreateent. Inignt_figntgl_flggltn_ alumni. 1.. 232-239- Princeton Center for Infancy and Early Childhood. (1970). Ihg_11;;t_ 'f 's w o t . NY: Brosset A Dunlap. Resnick, B. (1905). Enhancing parental coepetencies for high risk aothers: An evaluation of prevention effects. Qn111_figggg_gng_ 0111151.. 9.: ‘79’439- 91 Rosenberg, M. 0., A Reppucci, N. D. (1905). Prieary prevention of child "mm W. 5.5.. 576-505. - Select Cosaittee on Children, Youth, and Faeilies: House of Representatives. (1907). ELgblgl_gng_tng_figgggngg, Hashington, DC: U.S. Bovernsent Printing Office. Siegel, E., Beusan, K. E., Schaffer, E. S., Saunders, H. N., A Ingres, O. D. (1900). Hospital and hose support during infancy: Iepact on aaternal attacheent, child abuse and neglect, and health care utilization. eggjetgjcs, 5;, 103-190. Steele, B. F., A Pollock, C. B. (1960). A psychiatric study of parents who abuse infants and seall children. In R. E. Helfer and C. H. Keepe (Eds.), Ing_ggttgggg_5hjlg, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Straus, M. (1900). igljlx, Barden City, NY: Anchor Press. Nallach, L. 0., A Neissbourd, B. (1979). QLliting_g£gp;in_ggnt1;31_ Inl_figlilx_fingng_flnflgl, Evanston, IL: Faeily Focus, Inc. Hestat, Inc. (1900). Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect: 1900. Prepared for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Nashington, D.C. Young, L. (1964). Hggnggggy;g_gnilggmg, New York: HcBraw-Hill. APPENDICIES APPENDIX A LETTER INTRODUCING THE RESEARCH PROJECT Hello! Ny nase is Karen Young and 1's a graduate student at Hichigan State University. Toni Landick, the Prograa Director at the Faeily Browth Center, has sade it possible for se to do a research project on a topic that I's very interested in. Nhat's that topic you say ask? Nell, it's getting to know who the people are who participate in the activities at the Faeily Browth Center! In particular, I's interested in getting a better understanding of the people who use the Faeily Browth Center, the services that they use, and the reasons they are used. ' To help as answer these questions all you would have to do is allow as to spend one hour with you -- enough ties to cosplete an interview (34 questions) and for you to fill out two questionnaires (one is 22 questions and the other is 15 questions). I will be contacting you by telephone in a few days to explain the research project in sore detail and answer any questions you say have about it. Both Toni and I invite you to participate, we think it's a worthwhile project! Thanks in advance for your ties and consideration. Karen Young Michigan State University P.S. If your telephone is out of service or your nuaber is unlisted, just let Toni know (as soon as possible) that you are interested in the project and ask her to contact as -- we'll set up other arrangesents. 92 APPENDIX B TELEPHONE SCRIPT “Hello, sy nase is Karen Young and 1's a graduate student at HSU conducting a research project in conjunction with the Faeily Browth Center. l'e being given the opportunity to speak with parents who use the Faeily Browth Center to find out sore about thee, the services they use, and their satisfaction with services received. Toni Landick, the Prograa Director at the Faeily Browth Center, provided as with your naee, your telephone nuaber, and your address. You probably have already received a letter briefly describing this project in the sail recently?“ (Regardless to whether the prospective participants have received the letter (sosetiees the sail runs slow or an incorrect address was used) the following is said]: “I can tell you sore about the project if you think you eight be interested in participating.“ [If they are not interested, I thank thee for listening and say goodbye. If they are interested, the following is said]: “As I said, the purpose of the project is to gather inforaation about the parents in the Lansing area who use the Faeily Browth Center. Boss of the questions focus on your faeily life and your relationship with your child(ren), others focus on the services you have used at the Faeily Browth Center, how often you have used thee, and your satisfaction with thee. The way I would obtain this inforaation is by coeing to your hose and asking you to fill out two questionnaires, one is 22 questions and the other is 15, and conducting an interview with you. All of this would take between 45 sinutes and one hour to cosplete. If you have soee interest, but would like sore ties to think about it, I could call you back tosorrow -- you do not have to give as an answer right now.“ [If the prospective participant consents to participate in the project, a day and ties is set for the researcher to case out to their hosel. 93 APPENDIX C CONSENT PORN Participation in drop-in center activities is becoeing very popular with sany parents in your area. Through prograa participation parents such as yourself are given the chance to becoee involved in activities like parent support and parent education classes and receive services such as child care. In order to get a better understanding of the types of people who use drop-in centers, the services that are used, and the reasons for use, you will be asked to take part in an interview and cosplete two questionnaires. An exaeple of the types of questions you will be asked include: your attitude about parenting, the types of stresses you have faced (or are facing) in your life, who the people are who you can count on in tiees of need, the ages of faeily aeebers, and your satisfaction with the services of your drop-in center. The interview will take forty (40) sinutes to cosplete and the two questionnaires will take a total of twenty (20) sinutes to cosplete. 1. I hereby acknowledge that the details of this research study have been explained to se and I understand what sy role as a participant will be. 2. I understand that I say withdraw sy consent to participate at any tiee without penalty. 3. I understand that sy decision to participate will not effect the services I receive froe the drop-in center. 4. I understand that all inforaation gathered and all research results will be kept in strict confidence and sy identity will resain anonysous. Upon request, sussary results of the study will be sade available to as. I freely give sy consent to participate in this project and to allow all inforaation gathered to be used as part of a research study being conducted by Karen Young (telephone nusber) at Michigan State 94 95 University. researcher's signature l. 2. 3. APPENDIX D STRUCTURED INTERVIEN Nho are the people who live in your household? Only tell as their initials and also give their sex, age, and relationship to you. Initials Sex Age Relationship 1. 2. 3. 4. 6. 7. 9. 10. Nhat was the last grade you cospleted in school? Actual nuaber of years: _- __._-yrs Are you currently esployed? 1 I no 2 I part-tiee or occasional 3 I yes 96 4. 97 Hhat is your earital status? single separated divorced widowed sarried (noun.— IIIII How sany tiees have you soved during the past year? Actual nuaber of soves: eeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaseeeeeeeee In the next four questions I‘s going to ask you about the people who provide you with different kinds of support. For each question you can nase up to 10 people or none at all. You can also naee any of the ease people over in any of the four questions. Again, only give their initials and also give their sex, age, and relationship to you. 6. 7. 9. Of the people you know -- friends, relatives, neighbors, co- workers, profsssionals, acquaintances -- who provides you with eeotional support? That is, who are the people who listen to your troubles, share their life experiences with you, and who cosfort you? Of the people you know, who provides you with practical assistance? That is, who are the people who do things for you like run errands, babysit, and lend you eoney? Of the people you know, who provides you with advice and inforaation? That is, who are the people who give you suggestions on how to solve your problees and tell you where to get needed inforaation? Of the people you know, who provides you with coepanionship? That is, who are the people who spend ties with you doing things like talking, shopping, and going to the sovies? 98 Initials (Eso Sup lPrac (Advice (Cospan (Sex (Age (Rel (Assis (Info I 10. Of the people you know, who sakes life sore difficult for you? You can nase up to ten people or none at all. You can also nase any of the ease people you gave in the other questions. Initials Sex Age Relationship 1. 2. 3. 4. 6. 7. 9. 10. 99 11. How aany tiees did you go to church in the last sonth? Actual nuaber of tiees: _- -- 12. How aany tiees did you go to a social function in the last sonth? Actual nuaber of tiees: _, -, 13. How sany tiees did you go to an educational function in the last sonth? Actual nuaber of tiees: _- -_ 14. How sany tiees did you go to a political function in the last sonth? Actual nuaber of tiees: 15. How aany groups or organizations do you belong to? Actual nusber of organizations: -_ __ eeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeseeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Now I would like to ask you soee questions only about your child(ren) who is (are) enrolled in the drop-in child care at the Faeily Browth Center: 16. How eany of your children are (were) enrolled in drop-in child care at the Faeily Browth Center? Actual nuaber of children enrolled: ____ Hhat are their initials? _-_ _-- --_ --- --- --- 17. Does this (these) child(ren) have any physical handicaps? 1 I no 2 I yes 100 10. In general, does your thild(ren) go to sleep and wake up at about the ease tiee everyday? 1 2 3 no regular pattern sosetiees regular pattern (tiee varies by within 1/2 hour 1-2 hours) Initials Response Initials Response Child 01 ____________ Child 04‘ ____________ Child 02 ____________ Child 05 ____________ Child 03 Child 06 19. Can your child(ren) aeuse his/theeselves for 1/2 hour or so playing with a toy or gase or does he/they indicate a need for attention or a new activity after several sinutes? 1 2 3 4 constantly needs short attention can aeuse occupies self for new stiaulation span hisselfl long periods of theeselves tiee soeewhat Initials Response Initials . Response Child 01 ____________ Child 04 ____________ , Child 02 ____________ Child 05 ____________ Child 03 Child 06 20. Is the teepo of your child's/childrens' play very active with such sovesent, or does he/they play quietly, calsly? 1 2 3 4 very soeewhat soeewhat very quiet quiet active active Initials Response Initials Response Child 41 ____________ Child 04 ____________ Child 02 Child 05 Child 03 Child .6 101 21. Nould you describe your child(ren) as stubborn or agreeable? 1 2 3 4 very soeewhat soeewhat very stubborn stubborn agreeable agreeable Initials Response Initials Response Child I: _ ___________ Child :4 ____________ Child 02 ____________ Child 05 _________ ‘__ Child 03 Child 06 ____________ 22. Does your child(ren) throw teeper tantruss? 1 2 3 4 no rarely occasionally constantly Initials Response Initials Response Child 01 ____________ Child 04 ............ Child 42 ____________ Child 05 ............ Child 53 Child 06 ............ 23. Do you ever put his/thee in another rooe or deprive his/thee of soeething as a fore of discipline? 1 2 3 4 no rarely occasionally constantly Initials Response Initials Response Child 01 ____________ Child 04 ____________ Child 02 Child 05 ____________ Child 03 Child 96 ............ 102 24. Do you ever spank your child(ren)? 1 2 3 4 no rarely occasionally constantly Initials Response Initials Response Child 01 ____________ Child 04 ____________ Child 02 ____________ Child 05 ____________ Child 03 Child 06 25. How sany tiees a week does soee other person (besides drop-in center staff) take care of your child(ren)? never 1 - 2 3 - 4 5 - 7 sore than 0 tiees “.00Ne-e II... 26. How long have you lived in the Lansing area? less than one year 1 - 2 years 3 - 5 years 6 - 10 years 11 or sore years (I‘MNs-I IIII. OO‘I‘IDOIR‘I‘IO‘IOCOSMICDRCOCOO‘I‘IQ.AGO!{OUUNO‘I‘II’I'G‘I‘I‘II’A{DDU‘I‘IOGQIAC‘I’R‘I00!"!I"! Now I would like to ask you soee questions about the problees soee people have in their faeily situations: 27. Are you or anyone else in your faeily having any particular health or eedical problees requiring a doctor's attention? 1 I no 2 I yes 20. Do you feel that you're overwhelsed with your children? never infrequently sosetiees often all the ties encoded.- IIIII 103 29. On the whole, would you describe your present living situation as happy or unhappy? very unhappy soeewhat unhappy so-so, variable soeewhat happy very happy “.0400." II... 30. Do you ever lose your teeper? no rarely sosetiees often all the ties 0.00”» IIIII eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeee To cosplete the interview I would like to ask you soee questions about children in general: 31. At what age do you think parents should start toilet training? Actual age in sonths: . eths 32. At what age do you think a child should know what you seen when you tell his no? Actual age in sonths: . eths 33. At what age do you think a child should be able to sleep through the whole night? Actual age in sonths: . eths 34. At what age do you think a child can stay alone while you go out for an hour or so in the afternoon? Actual age in years: . yrs APPENDIX E PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM IN ORDER TO IMPROVE OUR SERVICES FOR PARENTS, NE NOULD APPRECIATE YOUR RESPONSE TO THE FOLLONINB QUESTIONS. PLEASE CHECK THE CORRECT RESPONSE. Date: __________ Haas of Prograa: __________________________ l. Nhat is your Age: _______ 2. Nhat is your Race: (1) _____ Hhite (4) _____ Native Aeerican (2) _____ Black (5) _____ Hispanic (3) _____ Asian (6) _____ Other (please specify) 3. Nhat is your prieary source of incoee: (l) _____ esploysent of yourself, spouse (or partner), or both (2) _____ parents (3) _____ public assistance (welfare, B.A., A.F.D.C.) (4) _____ other (please specify) _________________________ 4. Nhat is your faeily incoee: (1) _____ under 8500/sonth (2) _____ 3501 to SBOOIsonth '(3) _____ $001 to 31,1001sonth (4) _____ over 41,101/sonth PLEASE CONTINUE 104 105 5. Are you presently expecting a child? (1) _____ Yes (2) _____ No 6. Are you currently participating in activities at the Faeily Browth Center? (1) _____ Yes (2) _____ No How long did you participate? ______________ THANK YOU VERY MUCH APPENDIX F PARENTAL ATTITUDE OUESTIONNAIRE THE FOLLOHING STATEMENTS ARE ABOUT PARENTING AND RAISING CHILDREN. THERE ARE NO RIGHT OR HRONG ANSNERS, ONLY YOUR OPINION. USE THE FOLLONING RATING SCALE TO INDICATE YOUR DEGREE OF AGREEMENT OR DISAGREEHENT HITH EACH OF THE STATEMENTS BELON. Box 01 Box 02 Box 03 Box 04 Box 05 YOU DECIDE HON PUTTING AN 'X' STRONGLY ABREE - True aost of the ties ABREE - True soee of the ties DON'T KNON - Unable to decide DISABREE - Not true soee of the ties STRONBLY DISABREE - Not true seat of the ties MUCH YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE HITH EACH STATEMENT BY IN THE BOX UNDER THE STATEMENT OF YOUR CHOICE. USE BOX 03 (DON'T KNOH) ONLY NHEN IT IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO DECIDE ON ONE OF THE OTHER CHOICES. l. Nhen dealing with sy children I feel control of sy eeotions aost of the ties. 11112113114115] 2. I feel cosfortable with the way I discipline sy children. [11121131141151 3. Parenting is a tough job. [11121131141151 4. There are tiees when I think ey children desand too such of se. 11112113114115] 5. I as able to take a break froe sy children when I need it. [1112113114115] 6. I have a good idea of what children are like at different stages of their developeent. 11112113114115] 7. Soeetises I don‘t think that I as doing everything that I can for ey children. (11121131141151 0. Hy faeily helps se slot with sy children. 11112113114115] PLEASE CONTINUE 106 107 9. I have enough eoney to take good care of ey 10. ll. 12. l3. 14. IS. 16. 17. IO. 19. 20. 21. 22. children. Nhen sy children sake ee angry I worry about what I say do to thee. I worry alot when soseone else is taking care of sy children. I's confident that I know how to take good care of ey children when they're sick. I enjoy the ties I spend alone with sy children. At tiees I need a break froe taking care of sy children. I have enough ties for eyself. Hy sate (husband, boyfriend, etc.) helps ee alot with sy children. I think I's doing a good job as a parent. I need sore eoney to sake ends seat at hose. I feel that I's quite aware of agencies and groups in the area that offer service for parents and children. I feel like sy children have a good feeling about theeselves. I always have trouble finding a babysitter for sy children. I have alot of fun with sy children. THANK YOU VERY MUCH [11121131141151 [11121131141151 [1112113114115] [1112113114115] [11121131141151 [11121131141151 [11121131141151 [1112113114115] [11121131141151 11112113114115] 11112113114115] [11121131141151 [11(21131141151 [11121131141151 l. 2. 3. A. ~ao-UIa-oakau- e e e w w w e APPENDIX B PARTICIPANT SATISFACTION SURVEY How did you hear about the Faeily Browth Center? friend relative co-worker professional in the coeeunity acquaintance brochure/pasphlet other (please specify) ________________________ hhy did you begin to use the Faeily Browth Center? Ihy do you (did you) use the parent support group service? How often in the last eonth have you used the parent support group service? Nusber of tiees - ...... lhy do you (did you) use the parent education service? PLEASE CONTINUE 108 6. 7. 9. 10. II. 109 How often in the last eonth have you used the parent education service? Nueber of tiees I ______ Ihy do you (did you) use the drop-in child care service? How often in the last eonth have you used the drop-in child care service? Nusber of tiees I ______ Ihat are the kinds of things you do (did) while your child(ren) is (was) receiving drop-in child care? How often in the lest eonth have you used the recreational services (arts and crafts, field trips, etc.)? Nusber of tiees I ______ In general, how do you feel about the services that were provided by the Faeily Browth Center? (Check one only) -_--very dissatisfied ,___soeewhat dissatisfied no opinion --_,soeewhat satisfied very satisfied PLEASE CONTINUE 12. I3. 14. IS. 110 In which of the following areas has the Faeily Browth Center been helpful to you? (Check one or eore) drop-in child care providing ee with a recreational outlet difficulties in handling ey infant/child understanding ey child's needs and abilities ____child care/child developeent skills ___-ey worries about parenting social interaction/support with other parents continuing ey education developing ey job skills/finding a job other (explain) _____________________________________ none of the above In which of the following areas has the Faeily Browth Center ngg_ been helpful to you? (Check one or eore) drop-in child care providing ee with e recreetional outlet difficulties in hendling ey infant/child understanding ey child‘s needs and abilities ____child care/child developeent skills _-__ey worries about parenting social interaction/support with other parents ____continuing ey education ___developing ey job skills/finding a job other (explain) ____________________________________ none of the above Nhich Faeily Browth Center services have you been dissatisfied with and why? Nould you recoeeend the Faeily Browth Center to others? yes -__-no not sure THANK YOU VERY NUCH APPENDIX N PROSRAN RESISTER Prograe Naee: Service used eost over 4 weeks of tracking Service used least over 4 weeks of tracking I. SERVICE NEEK TOTAL I PARTICIPANT OATA 2 3 hueber of Children Enrolled Children's Sex H F II. SERVICE OATA Service One Respite Child Care L—m—n—p-Oo—o-bc—I-u—pu—uu-u—u—o- Service Two I Parent Sup- I port Broup I I Serv. Three I Parent Educ.I I Other I* I I Iotal Nusberl of Services I Provided I I o.un—uoh-u—c-o—u-urn-u—~b—-———-——um——u~—P...- ----r—-----L----r----------b—-F--—---k- c--__-_r--t--___--t_-—_-L-_---_-_ ”—..—1_....,—u—buu——————uu—u.——————..—.—p.— L____-____L_____-_L___,-b__~-__-g 111 I. 2. 3. 4. 6. 7. 9. 10. 11. APPENDIX I ITENS APPEARING ON THE RESEARCH INSTRUNENTS Available social support (1-7 are scale itess) Of the people you know -- friends, relatives, neighbors, co- workers, professionals, acquaintances -- who provides you with eeotional support? That is, who are the people who listen to your troubles, share their life experiences with you, and who cosfort you? Of the people you know, who provides you with practical assistance? That is, who are the people who do things for you like run errands, babysit, and lend you eoney? Of the people you know, who provides you with advice and inforeation? That is, who are the people who give you suggestions on how to solve your problees and tell you where to get needed inforeation? Of the people you know, who provides you with coepanionship? That is, who are the people who spend tiee with you doing things like talking, shopping, and going to the eovies? How eany individuals naeed as supporters were repeated in three support categories? (This is an extrapolated itee) How eany tiees did you go to a social function in the last eonth? How eany groups or organizations do you belong to? How eany individuals naeed as supporters were repeated in two support categories? (This is an extrapolated itee) How eany individuals naeed as supporters were repeated in four support categories? (This is an extrapolated itee) Hy faeily helps ee alot with ey children. fly eate (husband, boyfriend, etc.) helps ee alot with ey children. 112 12. l3. I4. 15. 16. l. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 9. 10. 11. l2. l3. 14. 15. 113 Are you currently participating in activities at the FBC? How eany tiees did you go to a political function in the last eonth? How eany tiees did you go to church in the last eonth? How eany tiees did you go to an educational function in the last eonth? I feel that l'e quite aware of agencies and groups in the area that offer services for parents and children. Parenting attitude (1-6 are scale itees) Hhen dealing with ey children I feel in control of ey eeotions aost of the tiee. I I I I I I feel cosfortable with the way I discipline ey children. ae able to take a break froe ey children when I need it. enjoy the tiee I spend alone with ey children. think I'e doing a good job as a parent. feel like ey children have a good feeling about theeselves. have a good idea of what children are like at different stages of their developeent. I 'e confident that I know how to take good care of ey children when they're sick. I have alot of fun with ey children. At what age do you think parents should start toilet training? At what age do you think a child should know what you eean when you tell his no? At what age do you think a child should be able to sleep through the whole night? Parenting is a tough iob. Soeetiees I don't think that I as doing everything that I can for ey children. I worry alot when soeeone else is taking care of ey children. 114 Life stress (l-7 are scale itess) 1. How eany of your children are (were) enrolled in drop-in child care at the Faeily Browth Center? 2(a,b). Can your child(ren) aeuse hie/theeselves for 112 hour or so playing with a toy or gaee or does he/they indicate a need for attention or a new activity after several sinutes? 3(a,b). Is the teepo of your child's/childrens' play very active, with such eoveeent, or does he/they play quietly, calsly? 4(a,b). Nould you describe your child(ren) as stubborn or agreeable? 5(a,b). Does your child(ren) throw teeper tantruss? 6(a,b). Do you ever spank your child(ren)? 7. In general, does your child(ren) go to sleep and wake up at about the saee tiee everyday? O. Does this (these) child(ren) have any physical handicaps? 9. Do you feel that you're overwheleed with your children? lOIa,b). Do you ever put hie/thee in another rooe or deprive hie/thee of soeething as a fore of discipline? II. I have enough tiee for eyself. 12. How eany of the parent's children were enrolled in drop-in child care over the past four weeks? 13. How eany of the parent's eale children were enrolled in drop-in child care over the past four weeks? 14. Are you or anyone else in your faeily having any particular health or eedical problees requiring a doctor's attention? is. On the whole, would you describe your present living situation as happy or unhappy? lb. Of the people you know, who eakes life eore difficult for you? You can naee up to ten people or none at all. You can also naee any of the saee people you gave in the other [positive support] questions. 17. Does this (these) child(ren) have any physical handicaps? 18. Do you feel that you're overwheleed with your children? 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. l. 2. l. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. a. 9. 115 Do you ever lose your teeper? I have enough eoney to take good care of ey children. There are tiees when I think ey children desand too euch of ee. Hhen ey children eakes ee angry, I worry about what I say do to thee. At tiees I need a break froe taking care of ey children. I need eore eoney to wake ends eeet at hoee. I always have trouble finding a babysitter for ey children. Residential Stability (l and 2 are scale itees) How eany tiees have you eoved during the past year? How long have you lived in the Lansing area? Satisfaction (i and 2 are scale itees) In general, how do you feel about the services that were provided by the Faeily Browth Center? Nould you recoeeend the Faeily Browth Center to others? Oeeographic itees Iho are the people who live in your household? Only tell ee their initials and also give their sex, age, and relationship to you. Hhat was the last grade you coepleted in school? Are you currently esployed? hhat is your earital status? Nhat is your age? Hhat is your race? Hhat is your prieary source of incoee? Hhat is your faeily incoee? Are you presently expecting a child? "I7'1111111711111111111'I'11