A Community-Based Parenting Skill Development Program

Across the United States, countless children and adolescents experienced 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).

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 û individuals capable not only of rearing children effectively, but also capable of finding and retaining gainful employment, eliminating welfare or pu

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lude the study and offer a summary and recommendations for both program implementation and additional research. CHAPTER II Review of Literature Overview of the Chapter The issues addressed in this review of literature speak to the research questions presented in Chapter I. This includes an overview of the importance of parenting skills, the effects of improved parenting on families, and the types of programs and their efficacy that are available for working with this particular population. First, however, a brief discussion of the strengths perspective is presented to identify the theoretical foundation of the study. The Strengths Perspective Saleebey (1996) reported that the impetus for the evolution of a more strengths oriented view of social work practice comes from the awareness that U.S. culture and the helping processions are saturated with psychosocial approaches based on individual, family, and community pathology, deficits, problems, abnormality, victimization, and disorder. Practicing from a Strengths Perspective does not require social workers to ignore these issues, but does offer what Saleebey (1996, 1997) calls an opportunity to shift part of the focus in interventio
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Strengths Perspective, Shepherd Rose, Key Terms, Khairallah Race-Bigelow, Ritchie Partin, Kent Leather, Devaney Milstein, Wagner Clayton, Minke Anderson, Los Angeles, parenting skills, strengths perspective, et al, johnson et al, social worker, johnson et, al 2005, saleebey 1996, social practice, et al 2005, academic failure, helper 2005, social support interventions, social practice york, perspective social practice,
Approximate Word count = 3215
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)