Building on Family Strengths
Core Function: Research and Evaluation
The Building on Family Strengths project is a collaborative effort of the University of Washington’s Department of Family and Child Nursing, the Center on Human Development and Disability, and the Children’s Hospital Regional Medical Center-Center for Children with Special Needs.
The project offers classes for parents and caregivers of children ages 2 to 11 with ongoing health care needs, which include frequent surgeries, hospital and doctor’s visits, medicines, or special treatments. The goal of the program is to help parents and caregivers manage the challenges faced in raising children with ongoing health conditions. This project is also a research study designed to examine the effectiveness of this program model.
Classes are free and structured into 2-hour weekly sessions for 7 weeks. During classes parents and caregivers learn (1) new ways of coping and managing the child’s daily activities related to the chronic condition; (2) new skills to work with school, health, and other community systems; (3) ways to involve children in their own health care, and (4) tips to achieving difficult development goals. The class also provides a safe place for parents and caregivers to share how their child’s health impacts them personally, their parenting, and their families.
The research project portion of the project requires that participants be randomly assigned to one of two groups, one group taking the course before the other. Group members are surveyed to collect information that is used to determine the effectiveness of this model in meeting the needs of these parents as caregivers of children with chronic health conditions.
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