The parent education and family support component in phase 2 aims to strengthen protective factors of healthy child development and reduce risk factors of child abuse and neglect among disadvantaged families by providing community-based preventive interventions for children and their significant adults. Participants include about 600 parents from randomly assigned 100 preschools to the four groups (group 1: hub + school support; group 2: school support; group 3: hub support; group 4: delay group). The primary hypothesis is to examine the efficacy of the parenting programs for young children and their parents from K1 to K3. The programs are delivered by social workers at kindergartens or community hubs. The second aim/hypothesis of this project is to investigate the overall synergy impact of the community hub. The success of the parent-child interactive program offers a foundation for the hub to further develop community-based parent education and family support programs that aim at building parents/caregivers' competence in optimizing child development and competence in caregivers and professionals through networking multiple ecological systems, i.e., family, school, and hub or other organizations in the community.
Community hubs could be scaled up as a key setting where majority of intervention shall take place in to build capacity of significant others. For instance, there it will be an arena for the community-based parent education and family support programs. Community hubs act as a connector to bridge services. Due to disparity in resources and knowledge, parents in poverty may need extra rapport to bridge them to various supportive services available in the hub/community for the children's optimum development. This child and family centered approach can help foster community cohesion and raise family and children well-being. The parenting program is designed with an emphasis on strength-based parenting practice and both children and parents have parallel sessions on the same character strength and also joint sessions to optimize the impact. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be collected.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
600
A parenting program is designed with strength-based parenting theory and practice. It has 6 sessions for parents and young children when the children are at 3 years old, 4 sessions for them at 4 years old and another 4 sessions for them at 5 years old.
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Change in early parenting attitude
1 indicates the lowest scores and 7 indicates the highest scores in affection and attachment between parents and children.
Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 4-6 months
Change in strength-based parenting practice
1 indicates lowest use of strength-based parenting practice and 7 indicates highest use of strength-based parenting practice
Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 6 months
Change in child and parent relationship
1 indicates the lowest scores and 5 indicates the highest scores in closeness and conflicts
Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 4-6 months
Change in synergy impact of inter-sectors
1 indicates the lowest score and 5 indicates the highest scores in synergy impact
Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 4-6 months
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