September 9, 2009

Evaluation of the Statewide Implementation of a Parent Education Program in Louisiana's Child Welfare Agency: The Nurturing Parenting Program for Infants, Toddlers, and Pre-School Children

Parent education is one of the most commonly used forms of intervention for abusive or high-risk parents in child welfare agencies across the country. Due to limited monitoring of implementation and evaluation of outcomes, very little is known about the effectiveness of parent education with child welfare populations. Constraints include limited financial resources requiring more reliance on free or low-cost community-based services, pressure to comply with Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) guidelines related to timely permanence while adhering to the recommended level of intervention sufficient to meet the needs of high risk parents, difficulty in arranging child participation in parenting classes so that parents have an opportunity to practice new skills, timely and appropriate services to parents with complex problems, and a lack of professionally educated and trained parent educators. There is a clear and legitimate expectation for child welfare agencies to move toward providing a more evidence-based array of parenting interventions.

Rhenda H. Hodnett, Karen Faulk, Amy Dellinger, and Erin Maher discuss a compelling argument for the need to build evidence base of parent training programs specifically used in child welfare agency settings. Four parent training programs are identified in the article as being commonly used in child welfare. This study evaluates Nurturing Parenting as implemented on a statewide basis in Louisiana's child welfare agency. This study builds on the evidence base of parent training in child welfare systems in several important ways: It is the largest sample size of a pure child welfare population using a parenting program designed for the specific target population; it is the only evaluation of Nurturing Parenting Program, NPP, that has information on a large number of parental characteristics in addition to outcomes; and it is the first and only statewide implementation and evaluation of NPP in a state-run child welfare agency. The information learned in this process is valuable to other state systems interested in moving towards a more consistent and evidence-based approach to parenting education.