An Update on the “Parent Connectors” Program – Providing Support for Families and Youth with Emotional Disabilities

This poster presentation describes a project designed to develop, implement, and evaluate a program to provide parent support to families with children identified as having emotional disturbances (ED) and educated in special education programs in public schools. The goal of the project is to improve outcomes for children and their families through parent participation in an effective, school-based parent-to-parent support program which links, through telephone calls, experienced “Parent Connectors” (who have a child that receives services) with parents who have a child with ED. The project is being implemented through a unique partnership of teachers, a family advocacy group, and researchers who have collaboratively constructed a format for conducting a parent support program that can be consistently implemented and evaluated in terms of adherence to the conceptual model.

The participants in this project include the parents of children with ED (N=115), “Parent Connectors” (N=5), and the special education teachers (N=31) of the children with emotional disturbances. Parent participants have been randomly assigned to one of two groups. In the “Teacher Group”, the control condition, parents and students interact with teachers who have received training and resources to increase parent involvement in the education of their children. In the “Parent Connector Group”, the experimental condition, direct parent support is supplied through telephone calls in addition to the specially trained teacher. In this poster presentation we will present an updated analysis of the data comparing the two groups on standardized instruments as well as descriptive data on Parent Connector activities.