INTRODUCTION: Parenting education and support services offer hope for families! The following reports provide valuable data that allow Families First to maintain an ongoing process of assessment and program improvement. Knowing specifically the ways in which parents are affected by their participation in our programs, we are able to reassess and sharpen our curriculum and provide valuable feedback and training for our leaders as well as for the personnel from the various community agencies with which we partner.

The following research supports Families First mission to strengthen families.

Study on the Impact of Families First Parenting Programs Goodman Research Group (1997)

Families First evaluates all programs in order to maintain the quality and credibility of our offerings. In 1997, outcome evaluation became one of our top organizational priorities and we contacted Goodman Research Group, a highly respected social science research organization, to conduct a year-long assessment of our core curricular series on discipline.

According to the Goodman Research Group, parents participating in our programs:

• Parents knowledge of what to do when they had conflicts with their children and how to respond when a child was angry increased.
• Parents showed improved understanding of their children's misbehaviors and their child's behavior when the two of them had conflicts.
• Parents felt more effective in dealing with children's troublesome behaviors.
• Parents enjoyed their children more and felt less angry, stressed, and overwhelmed by their child and by their parenting responsibilities.
• Parents showed more control over their negative reactions to their children.

"When services such as parenting education and support are offered, outcomes for children, siblings and families improve. [Such services,] enhance parents' overall competence and self-efficacy, knowledge of child development, and capacities to parent more effectively." The result: more parents who are able to create and maintain healthy home environments, and more children who receive the nurturing and guidance necessary to grow into independent, productive adults. Unfortunately, because of language and cultural differences, linguistic minority parents often do not know where to turn for help, do not know that help is available, or, as in this case, find that fully appropriate and effective programming is simply not available for them.

A national benchmark survey results raise questions regarding what Americans know about raising emotionally, intellectually and socially healthy children. This landmark survey measured the child development knowledge of 3,000 adults and parents. "The results of the survey overwhelmingly indicate that adults need more and better information, delivered in more accessible ways," said Suzanne Muchin, chief executive officer of CIVITAS, a not-for-profit communications group that commissioned the survey.

Key Findings:

• Parents' thirst for more information on promoting healthy development.
• Parents need more information about how development progresses, what it "looks" like, and how to gauge their child's development.
• Parents are less informed on emotional, intellectual and social development than physical development.