ASSESSMENT OF PARENTAL RESPONSES TO A BEHAVIORAL CHANGE PROGRAM FOR PARENTS OF HANDICAPPED CHILDREN: A PILOT STUDY

Parents of handicapped children face special challenges if they attempt to assure maximal development of their children. The present study was designed with an assumption that parental tactics must be based on long term analysis of needs and short term implementation of behavioral parenting objectives. A review of the literature on problems of parents with handicapped children and on psychological models describing the role of parents yielded limited conceptual guidelines but no disagreements with the notion of attempting to increase children\u27s self-help and positive self reference statements. Prevention of future problems by increasing parent planning and problem solving skills was also found conceptually consistent with the varied opinions about the role of parents. A program was designed with all elements operationally defined based on the above conceptual guidelines. Fifteen couples with children having varied handicaps and ages from 1 to 13 verbally committed themselves to attend one of three groups meeting for weekly sessions for 8 to 10 weeks. A staggered multiple baseline design controlled historical influences by group. Parents from 8 of the 15 families attended differing numbers of sessions and responded to pretests and posttests which consisted of paper-pencil instruments measuring moods, assertiveness and future hopefulness, in addition to self-rating of their child and their parenting skills. Moods and future hopefulness were also measured weekly. Post-treatment assessment additionally included a personal structured interview by a confederate of the researcher. The experimental program incorporated a combination of discussion and planned exercieses to elicit planning and decision making about their children by the participants. A series of seven newsletters were written by a research confederate who is the mother of a handicapped child to additionally cue planning activities. Participants expressed satisfaction with the total program but failed to respond to some of the program objectives including systematic observation of selected behaviors of their child, and setting of specific short term objectives. It is recommended that evaluation procedures in future research be modified to assess individual rather than group progress and that optional learning modules be used to allow individual choice of program elements. A self help group model appears most likely to meet the needs of parents of the type participating in this pilot experiment. Due consideration must be given to reinforcement of attendance by dividing sessions into educational and social interaction sections or by other tactics. Meetings must be more than a week apart for parents of handicapped children, and provision should be made for optional individual consultation to resolve problems. It is concluded that the need for preventive programming to help parents of handicapped children set present objectives based on analysis of desired futures for their children remains largely unmet, and that significant modifications should be made in the pilot program to achieve such ends