Evaluating the Impact of a Goal Setting Intervention Program with Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, 2018-2020
Older grandparents (Generations United, 2015). Grandparents are very important in the lives of the grandchildren they are raising and influence them in many ways. Grandparents caring for their grandchildren also take on parental responsibilities and serve as role models to grandchildren when discussing matters of culture and issues pertinent to contemporary life (e.g., sexuality, violence in the schools, technology, and drug use). However, grandparents also report feeling isolated from age peers, feel judged by others as failures as parents, report shame linked to the perceived stigma of having to raise their grandchildren, and may lack skills to meet these challenges and maintain their own mental and physical health and well-being.
The goal of the proposed study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a socio-cognitive intervention to improve the health and social psychological outcomes for grandparents raising grandchildren using the theory of Selection, Optimization and Compensation (Freund & Baltes, 1998). The study will focus on the potential impact to improve the quality of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and it will refresh the grandparents’ communication skills and strategies to ask for help and to receive support as well as provide basic instruction in positive parenting practices.
This pilot intervention study will recruit at least 40 low income grandparents for the implementation training program which will entail of 4 to 6, two-hour sessions scheduled at a time/place convenient for the grandmothers as a whole. Half of them would be randomly assigned to intervention group, while the remaining half would be randomly assigned to a waiting list control condition. Each grandmother would complete a pre-and-posttest assessment interview with measures of caregiving satisfaction, anxiety, depression, well-being, caregiving strain, caregiver self-efficacy, and caregiving satisfaction, positive/negative affect (regarding her relationship to her grandchild), social support, and resilience. These measures are commonly used in the grandparent caregiving literature, and focus on both the positive and potential negative aspects of caregiving.
Media – TV:
Anthony Cirillo on Grandparents on Charlotte Today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66JiGAzVNWc&t=16s
SYMPOSIUM: Marshaling Social Support for Grandmothers Raising Grandchildren (SGS 2018)
Organizers: Julian Montoro-Rodriguez & Bert Hayslip
ABSTRACT
The U.S. Census Bureau (2010) estimates that more than 1.6 million children in America are being raised primarily by grandparents, often as a result of the death, incarceration or incapacitation of the child’s parents. Caregiving is psychologically, emotionally and physical challenging; and caregiving grandparents often report more functional health problems and chronic disease incidence than non-caregiving peers. There is consistent evidence that the perception of available support is linked to health and emotional well-being; but many grandmothers may not be able to receive the support they need since their own families are not fully functional and able to support them. Using the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) framework (Freund & Baltes, 1989) and socio-cognitive strategies we developed a program to assess the grandmothers’ supportive needs and to empower them to reduce their stress, improve their communication skills and satisfaction with social support. This symposium a) describes the main components of the proposed intervention; b) presents data from 19 grandmothers who attended the four weekly sessions with individual facilitators during the past months; c) reports on the effectiveness of the intervention in decreasing the grandmother’s stress; and d) discusses the its benefits to empower grandmothers to improve their psychological adjustment and take care of their needs. Powerpoint Presentation – Intro
PAPERS
1. Conceptual framework, goals, and methodology used to developed a program for grandmothers raising grandchildren (Anjana Nagrajan, UNC Charlotte) Powerpoint Presentation
2. Socio-demographic, health and social support characteristics of grandmothers enrolled in the study (Maryam Kazempour-Esmati, UNC Charlotte) Powerpoint Presentation
3. Communication Styles and Goal Setting Strategies to enhance grandmothers’ ability to obtain help. (Katie Kutcher, UNC Charlotte) Powerpoint Presentation
4. The impact of the intervention on grandmothers’ stress and satisfaction with social support (Julian Montoro-Rodriguez & Bert Hayslip, UNC Charlotte) Powerpoint Presentation