Project Description:
Preventing Abuse through Responsive Parenting (PARP)
The purpose of the “Preventing Abuse through Responsive Parenting†project is to reduce child abuse and neglect by improving parent’s knowledge of child development, parent/child interactions and community resources. This project will utilize a two-tiered approach. Four neighborhoods identified as high-risk by the Social Services Master Plan will be targeted. Participants will consist of families whose children are enrolled in 3 YWCA childcare centers located in these high-risk neighborhoods. In Tier 1, all parents will be screened for risk and all families will be offered the Building Babies’ Brains (B3) curriculum consisting of five 1-hour training sessions totaling 5 hours. B3 focuses on multiple aspects of child development and has been used successfully with parents who had their child removed from their custody, as one step towards reunification. Parents who score above the cutoff point on the risk screening, those at the greatest risk for abuse and neglect, will be offered Tier 2, an individualized therapeutic intervention called Responsive Teaching (RT). This intervention includes twenty 1-hour individualized sessions that focus on developing the parent/child relationship. RT will be offered either at the childcare center or in the home, in the primary language of the family. Families will also be linked to community resources such as WIC, the Village, and Camillus Health Concern. The incidence of abuse in these neighborhoods will be tracked by working with the Department of Children and Families through a monitoring system they have agreed to establish for this project.
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Racial or Ethnic Minorities, Disadvantaged Circumstances, Limited English
