Abstract
Family-to-family services are emerging as an important adjunctive service to traditional mental health care and a vehicle for improving parent engagement and service use in children’s mental health services. In New York State, a growing workforce of Family Peer Advocates (FPA) is delivering family-to-family services. We describe the development and evaluation of a professional program to enhance Family Peer Advocate professional skills, called the Parent Engagement and Empowerment Program (PEP). We detail the history and content of PEP and provide data from a pre/post and 6-month follow up evaluation of 58 FPA who participated in the first Statewide regional training effort. Self-efficacy, empowerment, and skills development were assessed at 3 time points: baseline, post-training, and 6-month follow-up. The largest changes were in self-efficacy and empowerment. Regional differences suggest differences in Family Peer Advocate workforce across areas of the state. This evaluation also provides the first systematic documentation of Family Peer Advocate activities over a six-month period. Consistent with peer specialists within the adult health care field, FPA in the children’s mental health field primarily focused on providing emotional support and service access issues. Implications for expanding family-to-family services and integrating it more broadly into provider organizations are described.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bickman, L. B., Earls, L., & Klindworth, L. (1991). Mental health services efficacy scale. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Center for Mental Health Policy.
Bickman, L., Heflinger, C. A., Northrup, D., Sonnichsen, S., & Schilling, S. (1998). Long term outcomes to family caregiver empowerment. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 7, 269–282. doi:10.1023/A:1022937327049.
Chow, J., Jaffee, K., & Snowden, L. (2003). Racial/ethnic disparities in the use of mental health services in poverty areas. American Journal of Public Health, 93, 792–797. doi:10.2105/AJPH.93.5.792.
Diala, C., Muntaner, C., Walrath, C., Nickerson, K., LaVeist, T., & Leaf, P. J. (2000). Racial differences in attitudes toward professional mental health care and in the use of services. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70, 455–464. doi:10.1037/h0087736.
Fortney, J., Rost, K., Zhang, M., & Warren, J. (1999). The impact of geographic accessibility on the intensity and quality of depression treatment. Medical Care, 37, 884–893.
Garland, A. F., Landsverk, J. A., & Lau, A. S. (2003). Racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service use among children in foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 5, 491–507. doi:10.1016/S0190-7409(03)00032-X.
Hines-Martin, V., Brown-Piper, A., Kim, S., & Malone, M. (2003). Enabling factors of mental health service use among African Americans. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 17, 197–204. doi:10.1016/S0883-9417(03)00094-3.
Hoagwood, K. E. (2005). Family-based services in children’s mental health: A research review and synthesis. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 690–713. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01451.x.
Hoagwood, K. E., Cavaleri, M., Olin, S. S., Burns, B. J., Slaton, E., Gruttadaro, J. D., et al. (2010). Family support in children’s mental health: A review and synthesis. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 13, 1–45. doi:10.1007/s10567-009-0060-5.
Jaccard, J., Dodge, T., & Dittus, P. (2002). Parent-adolescent communication about sex and birth control: A conceptual framework. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 97, 9–41. doi:10.1002/cd.48.
Kataoka, S. H., Stein, B. D., Laycox, L. H., Wong, M., Escudero, P., Wenli, T., et al. (2003). A school-based mental health program for traumatized Latino immigrant children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 42, 311–318. doi:10.1097/01.CHI.0000037038.04952.8E.
Koren, P. E., DeChillo, N., & Friesen, B. J. (1992). Measuring empowerment in families whose children have emotional disabilities: A brief questionnaire. Rehabilitation Psychology, 37, 305–321. doi:10.1037/h0079106.
Koroloff, N. M., & Friesen, B. J. (1997). Challenges in conducting family-centered mental health services research. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 5, 130–137. doi:10.1177/106342669700500301.
McKay, M. M., & Bannon, W. M. (2004). Engaging families in child mental health services. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 13, 905–921. doi:10.1016/j.chc.2004.04.001.
McKay, M., McCadam, K., & Gonzales, J. J. (1996). Addressing the barriers to mental health services for inner city children and their caretakers. Community Mental Health Journal, 32, 353–361. doi:10.1007/BF02249453.
McKay, M., Stoewe, J., McCadam, K., & Gonzales, J. (1998). Increasing access to child mental health services for urban children and their care givers. Health and Social Work, 23, 9–15.
Mechanic, D., Bilder, S., & McAlpine, D. D. (2002). Employing persons with serious mental illness. Health Affairs, 21, 242–253. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.21.5.242.
Nickerson, K. J., Helms, J. E., & Terrell, F. (1994). Cultural mistrust, opinions about mental illness, and black students’ attitudes toward seeking psychological help from white counselors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 41, 378–385. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.41.3.378.
Olin, S. S., Hoagwood, K. E., Rodriguez, J., Radigan, M., Burton, G., Cavaleri, M., & Jensen, S. (2010a). Impact of empowerment training on the professional work of family peer advocates. Children and Youth Services Review. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.06.012.
Olin, S. S., Hoagwood, K. E., Rodriguez, J., Ramos, B., Penn, M., Crowe, M., et al. (2010b). The application of behavior change theory to family-based services: Improving parent empowerment in children’s mental health. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 462–470. doi:10.1007/s10826-009-9317-3.
Owens, P. L., Hoagwood, K., Horwitz, S. M., Leaf, P. J., Poduska, J. M., Kellam, S. G., et al. (2002). Barriers to children’s mental health services. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 41, 731–738.
Pumariega, A. J., Glover, S., Holzer, C. E., & Nguyen, H. (1998). Utilization of mental health services in a tri-ethnic sample of adolescents. Community Mental Health Journal, 34, 145–156. doi:10.1023/A:1018788901831.
Roussos, A., Berger, S., & Harrison, M. (2008). Family support report: A call to action. New York, NY: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Division of Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Child and Adolescent Services.
Salzer, M. S., Schwenk, E., & Brusilovskiy, E. (2010). Certified peer specialist roles and activities: Results from a national survey. Psychiatric Services, 61, 520–523. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.61.5.520.
Tolan, P., Hanish, L., McKay, M., & Dickey, M. (2002). Evaluating process in child and family interventions: Aggression prevention as an example. Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 220–236. doi:10.1037/0893-3200.16.2.220.
Tuckman, B., & Jensen, M. (1977). Stages of small group development. Group and Organizational Studies, 2, 419–427. doi:10.1177/105960117700200404.
U. S. Department of Health, Human Services. (1999). Mental health: A report of the Surgeon General—Executive summary. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health.
U. S. Department of Health, Human Services. (2000). Translating behavioral science into action: Report of the National Advisory Mental Health Council’s Behavioral Science Workgroup. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health.
U. S. Department of Health, Human Services. (2001). Mental health: Culture, race, ethnicity. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health.
Whaley, A. L. (2001). Cultural mistrust and mental health services for African Americans: A review and meta-analysis. The Counseling Psychologist, 29, 513–531. doi:10.1177/0011000001294003.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Belinda Ramos, Maura Crowe, Sudha Mehta, Theresa Schwartz and Marlene Penn for their helpful input on this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rodriguez, J., Olin, S.S., Hoagwood, K.E. et al. The Development and Evaluation of a Parent Empowerment Program for Family Peer Advocates. J Child Fam Stud 20, 397–405 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-010-9405-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-010-9405-4