 |
|
|
| |
| Ranking |
Good Idea |
| Description |
The Strengthening Families Program (SFP) is a parenting and family skills training program that consists of 14 consecutive weekly skill-building sessions. Parents and children work separately in training sessions and then participate together in a session practicing the skills they learned earlier. Two booster sessions are used at 6 months to 1 year after the primary course. Children’s skills training sessions concentrate on setting goals, dealing with stress and emotions, communication skills, responsible behavior, and how to deal with peer pressure. Topics in the parental section include setting rules, nurturing, monitoring compliance, and applying appropriate discipline. SFP was developed and tested in 1983 with 6- to 12-year-old children of parents in substance abuse treatment. Since then, culturally modified versions and age-adapted versions (for 3- to 5-, 10- to 14-, and 13- to 17-year-olds) with new manuals have been evaluated and found effective for families with diverse backgrounds: African-American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, American Indian, Australian, and Canadian.
|
| Goal / Mission |
The goals of this program are to improve parenting skills and children’s behaviors and decrease conduct disorders; to improve children’s social competencies; and to improve family attachment, harmony, communication, and organization. |
| Results / Accomplishments |
SFP has been evaluated at least 18 times on Federal grants and at least 150 times on State grants by independent evaluators. The original National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) study involved a true pretest, posttest, and follow-up experimental design with random assignment of families to one of four experimental groups: 1) parent training only, 2) parent training plus children’s skills training, 3) the complete SFP including the family component, and 4) no treatment besides substance abuse treatment for parents. SFP was then culturally adapted and evaluated with five Center for Substance Abuse Prevention High-Risk Youth Program grants by independent evaluators using statistical control group designs that involved quasi-experimental, pretest, posttest, and 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24-month follow-ups. Recently, SFP was compared with a popular school-based aggression prevention program (I Can Problem Solve) and found highly effective (effect sizes = .45 to 1.38), employing a true experimental pretest–posttest, 12-month, and 24-month follow-up design in two Utah school districts. A NIDA four-group randomized clinical trial with about 800 primarily African-American families in the Washington, DC, area also found good results. |
| Categories |
Social Environment / Family Structure
Social Environment / Children's Social Environment
|
| Organization(s) |
University of Utah | | Source |
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Model Programs Guide (MPG) | | Date of Publication | 2005 | | Location |
Country: USA |
| Primary Contact |
Karol Kumpfer, Ph.D.
Department of Health Promotion and Education
21901 East South Campus Drive, Room 2142
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
(801) 581-7718
kkumpfer@xmission.com
http://www.strengtheningfamiliesprogram.org/ind...
|
| For more details |
http://www.dsgonline.com/mpg2.5//TitleV_MPG_Tab... |
| Target Audience |
Children, Families |
| Back to Promising Practices Home |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
