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Poster #183 - Initial Effects of a Preschool Home Visiting Program Foster Later-Emerging Benefits

Fri, March 22, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Introduction
The REDI-Parent program was developed to enrich the home visits provided to Head Start parents, in order to improve support for learning at home and boost the academic and social-emotional school readiness of children growing up in poverty. The 16-session home visiting program extended the REDI classroom program, and included interactive reading, literacy-based play and learning games, and coaching for parents in caregiving behaviors associated with the development of children’s learning and self-control. At the post-intervention assessment in kindergarten, children who received this enriched home visiting program showed significantly better early literacy skills, academic adjustment, and social competence than the randomized control group. Initial benefits were evident primarily in targeted areas of parent support for learning at home (e.g., quality of interactive reading, parent-child conversations) and child social-emotional and academic skills. Four years after the intervention, follow-up assessments in third grade revealed later emerging intervention effects on reduced parenting stress and reduced child problems at home. The current study used multilevel path analyses to model the associations between initial intervention effects on child and parent outcomes and these later-emerging reductions in parenting stress and parent-reported child problems.
Method
200 low-income families with prekindergarten children (55% White, 26% Black, 19% Latino; 56% male; Mage = 4.45 years) were recruited from 24 Head Start centers. Individual families were randomly assigned to receive the REDI-P home visiting program (intervention group, N = 95) or an alternative attention-control condition consisting of mail-home math activities (control group, N = 105). Measures of parenting stress and child behavior problems at home were collected at pre-intervention (preschool), post-intervention (kindergarten), and four years post-intervention (grade 3).
Results
Multi-level path analyses were performed to determine indirect effects on third-grade parenting stress (Figure 1) and child behavior problems (Figure 2). Initial intervention effects were represented by post-intervention (kindergarten) scores, controlling for baseline scores. Optimized, trimmed models identified key mediators of later-emerging intervention effects. Initial intervention effects on child social-emotional skills and parent-child conversations at home mediated the later effect of REDI-P on reduced parenting stress and reduced child problems at home. In addition, initial REDI-P effects boosting positive parent academic expectations also mediated later reductions in child problems at home.
Discussion
Children from low-income Head Start families are at elevated risk for adjustment difficulties due to adversities associated with poverty. By providing learning activities and encouraging parents to actively support children at home, REDI-P improved children’s social-emotional and academic skills. The present results show that the intervention also had longer term benefits for families, including fewer child problems at home and reduced parenting stress, which emerged from initial effects on both parents and children. By boosting child social-emotional skills and enhancing parents’ abilities to initiate and sustain meaningful conversations with their young children, REDI-P strengthened the parent-child relationship in ways that promoted improved behavioral and emotional adjustment for children and reduced parenting stress at home. The findings demonstrate that multiple benefits may emerge from a parent-focused school readiness intervention.

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