Online Training for Foster and Primary Parents of Neglected Children

为被忽视儿童的寄养父母和主要父母提供在线培训

• 批准号: 8591074
• 负责人: Richard J. Delaney
• 金额: $ 26.8万
• 依托单位: NORTHWEST MEDIA, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-01 至 2015-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8591074
• 关键词: Address; Antidotes; Aptitude; Attitude; Behavior; Biological; Caregivers; Child; Child Behavior; Communication; Complement; Conflict (Psychology); Data; Development; Educational process of instructing; Emotional; Family; Feasibility Studies; Feedback; Feeling; Fostering; Friction; Funding; Goals; Intervention; Interview; Lead; Learning; Life; Measures; Mental Health; Outcome; Parent-Child Relations; Parenting behavior; Parents; Persons; Phase; Play; Population; Preparation; Problem behavior; Process; Psychotherapy; Randomized; Reading; Research; Resources; Role; Small Business Innovation Research Grant; Social Interaction; Substance Use Disorder; Surveys; Testing; Therapeutic; Thinking; Touch sensation; Training; Training Programs; Work; addiction; base; care systems; child neglect; comparison group; court personnel; design; experience; externalizing behavior; foster care; foster child; foster parent; improved; innovation; maternal depression; phase 2 study; prevent; psychologic; public health relevance; response; scaffold; success; theories; virtual

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this Phase I we will develop and evaluate the first unit of an online serious game for foster and primary parents of neglected children. The goal of the training is to learn how parents in these two historically compartmentalized roles can improve their parenting by working cooperatively. Research shows that cross-training strategies can optimize the chances that the foster child will be successfully reunified with the primary family, a central goal of the foster care system. The central psychological construct of our approach is the parental reflective function, an emerging concept for understanding and improving social interactions that is being applied to parenting. In this specific context, it refes to parents' aptitude for understanding their child's and their own internal states (thoughts, feelings, intentions) and how these relate to the occurrence and reduction of externalizing child behavior problems. Our approach uses a serious game format, with interactive video feedback of prerecorded parent-child scenarios, to motivate parents to recognize and utilize the parental reflective function during parent-child interactions. In the first unit of the game developed in Phase I, titled In Touch: A Day in the Life, primary and foster parents work in pairs to learn to read and respond to a virtual parent's own and their child's internal states as they navigate a typical day of interactions fraught with possible friction, as presented in dramatized video segments. The game format is loosely based on the popular TV game show, Family Feud. In our version, parents will be paired into dyads-one foster and one primary parent. In the game, parents try to match the most frequent survey responses to questions regarding the parents' and child's internal states in the video segments. Answers to the survey will be generated by 20 experienced foster parents. Parents play the game and participate in the feasibility study at FosterParentCollege.com(R), an online training center developed by Northwest Media, Inc. via SBIR funding. Communication in each dyad will take place via a discussion board. We will carefully evaluate whether the serious game significantly improves parents' understanding of the reflective function, above and beyond what they would be expected to learn about it in a standard behavior management training program. Parents will be randomly assigned to teams, pairs, and experimental conditions. The treatment group will view a behavior management training as well as the serious game training, while the comparison group will view only the behavior management training. We will also complete the preliminary analysis of a central measure of the parental reflective function currently being developed in this field, the Parent Development Interview-Revised Short Version, which will be used in the Phase II study. In Phase II we will produce six additional training units of the game that covers: 1) Understanding and Addressing Children's Externalizing Behavior Problems; 2) Reflective Function as Antidote to Addictions, Domestic Conflict, and Maternal Depression; 3) Reflective Parenting and Emotional Scaffolding of Children; 4) How In Touch Parenting Can Augment and Complement Other Training Approaches; 5) A Primer for Children on Understanding and Articulating Their Inner World to Caregivers; and 6) Teaching Ancillary Professionals, Agency Staff, and Court Personnel About Reflective Parenting.

描述(由申请者提供)：在这个阶段，我们将开发和评估一个在线严肃游戏的第一个单元，该游戏面向被忽视儿童的寄养和初级父母。培训的目标是学习这两个历史上被区分的角色的父母如何通过合作来改善他们的育儿能力。研究表明，交叉培训策略可以优化寄养儿童与初级家庭成功团聚的机会，这是寄养系统的核心目标。我们方法的中心心理结构是父母的反思功能，这是一个正在出现的概念，用于理解和改善社会互动，正被应用于育儿。在这个特定的背景下，它涉及父母理解他们孩子和他们自己的内部状态(思想、感觉、意图)的能力，以及这些与外在儿童行为问题的发生和减少之间的关系。我们的方法使用严肃的游戏形式，通过预先录制的亲子场景的互动视频反馈，来激励父母在亲子互动过程中识别和利用父母的反思功能。在第一阶段开发的游戏的第一个单元中，初级父母和养父母结对工作，学习阅读和回应虚拟父母自己和孩子的内部状态，因为他们在充满可能摩擦的典型互动中度过了一天，如戏剧化的视频片段所示。游戏的形式大致上是根据流行的电视游戏节目《家庭仇杀》改编的。在我们的版本中，父母将被配对成二元组--一个养父母和一个主要父母。在游戏中，父母试图将最频繁的调查回答与视频片段中有关父母和孩子的内部状态的问题相匹配。这项调查的答案将由20名经验丰富的养父母提供。家长们玩这个游戏，并参与FosterParentCollege.com(R)的可行性研究，这是一个由Northwest Media，Inc.通过SBIR资金开发的在线培训中心。每个DYAD的交流将通过讨论板进行。我们将仔细评估这款严肃的游戏是否显著提高了父母对反思功能的理解，这超出了他们在标准行为管理培训计划中应该学到的东西。家长将被随机分配到团队、配对和实验条件下。治疗组在观看严肃游戏训练的同时，也观看行为管理训练，而对照组只观看行为管理训练。我们亦会完成这方面目前正在发展的父母反省功能的一项主要量度的初步分析，即家长发展面谈-修订的简短版本，将会在第二阶段研究中使用。在第二阶段，我们将制作六个额外的游戏培训单元，涵盖：1)理解和解决儿童的外在行为问题；2)反省作为成瘾、家庭冲突和母亲抑郁的解毒剂；3)反思性父母和儿童的情感支架；4)触摸式父母如何补充和补充其他培训方法；5)儿童理解和向照顾者阐明他们内心世界的入门读物；以及6)教授辅助专业人员、机构工作人员和法院人员关于反思性父母教育的知识。