A Community-Based Parenting Skill Development Program
Across the United States, countless children and adolescents experience myriad difficulties in coping with environmental and familial stresses; similarly, parents themselves often struggle to provide their dependent children with the structures, support, nurturing, care and discipline that are all so vital to proper development (Lee, 1994). Shepherd and Rose (1995) noted that primary among the critical factors which must be put into play to ensure that children succeed in mastering the tasks confronting them in society, in school, and in life as a whole is parental efficacy. For families and communities identified as at risk for the development of life-damaging problems (e.g., crime and delinquency, drug abuse, academic failure or school dropout, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, unemployment and poverty, and other social ills), community-based interventions designed to enhance parenting skills are an important element in the social service delivery system (Lee, 1994).
Thus, helping parents identify their skills deficits and then providing educational and other services that will ameliorate those deficits is a vital part of the social work intervention process. It speaks directly to meeting the needs of adult parents and their dependent children. It addresses the question of how one reduces risk factors that negatively impact upon human development and community stability.
Background of the Issue
Parental skills are indeed crucial to the development and achievement of dependent children. Simultaneously, many parents are themselves poorly prepared to be self-sufficient, productive members of their communities รป individuals capable not only of rearing children effectively, but also capable of finding and retaining gainful employment, eliminating welfare or public assistance dependency, and taking control of their own lives in the ...