The impact of a goal-setting intervention with custodial grandmothers: A demonstration project

The increasing number of grandparents raising grandchildren underscores the need to provide assistance to grandparent caregivers in terms of training them not only to refresh intergenerational skills, but also developing appropriate and effective strategies associated with the setting of personally meaningful goals for themselves. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a socio-cognitive pilot demonstration program to improve the health and social psychological outcomes for grandmothers raising grandchildren using the theory of Selection, Optimization and Compensation (Freund & Baltes, 1998). Sixteen grandmothers raising a grandchild under the age of 18 without the assistance of that child’s parent participated in 4-individual weekly sessions with a facilitator. Results indicate that an intervention designed to support custodial grandparents using the constructs embodied by the Selection, Optimization and Compensation model is a promising strategy to ameliorate negative outcomes (e.g., stress, anxiety), and initiate changes in the grandmother –grandchild relationship