Engaging Parents for Violence Prevention
Tina Cheng, Principal Investigator The overall goal of this project is to increase our understanding about how to successfully engage inner-city parents in youth violence prevention activities. Specific aims include: 1) To assess parent perceptions of their needs in parenting early adolescents, their strategies for keeping their children safe from violence and the best ways to engage parents in parenting programs; and 2) To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of a home visitation and telephone pilot intervention with parents of sixth-graders in an urban middle school to increase parental monitoring and school engagement. Aim one involves a series of qualitative interviews with parents of sixth-graders recruited from public middle schools in East Baltimore. Forty-four home-based interviews have been conducted. A coding scheme was developed, interviews have been coded and analysis is ongoing. The second aim involves the implementation and evaluation of a pilot intervention of a home visit and telephone intervention with parents of middle-schoolers. A parent advisory group was formed to guide this intervention and has met regularly. Thus far, 50 families have been recruited into this intervention. Baseline home interviews have been completed with the child and parent. We plan to continue recruitment, protocol implementation, and start six-month follow-up interviews to assess engagement and intervention effect. |
