Child abuse prevention is about strengthening the ability of parents and communities to care for their children’s health and well-being.
Preventing child abuse means understanding the conditions that make children vulnerable to harm and taking the action necessary to improve those conditions.
Prevent Child Abuse Rockdale has created the Rockdale Nurturing Center to address negative behaviors among abusive parents and create stronger, more nurturing families. The Active Parenting Programs teach age-specific parenting skills and the need to nurture oneself. The instruction includes components on:
- The philosophy of discipline and alternatives to spanking and violence;
- Nurturing – needs and self-esteem, developing empathy, ways to nurture others;
- Communication – redirecting, ignoring, communicating age-appropriate expectations;
- Establishing morals, values and rules; and
- The relationships between anger, alcohol/substance abuse and violence/abuse.
In its 20-years of service in the community, a variety of Parenting Programs have been implemented to provide parent education to the general parenting population, foster parents, and “at-risk” families referred by community agencies, domestic violence shelters, hospitals, schools and the juvenile court. Separate programs are provided for families with children ages 0-12, Hispanic families, teen parents, families with adolescents, fathers and prison inmates; along with individual classes for residents of domestic violence shelters, churches, foster parents, childcare workers, and professionals working with the victims of violence. This diverse set of prevention programs, combined with a variety of public education and community services, allows Prevent Child Abuse Rockdale to access an ever-growing population.
A variety of evaluation methods are used throughout the program to determine its value and effectiveness. A standardized inventory designed to assess the parenting and childrearing attitudes of adults and adolescents, is given at designated intervals. Responses generated from the inventory measure the expectations the parents have of their children, empathy toward children’s needs, belief in the use of corporal punishment and parent-child role clarification. Program evaluation forms that parents complete at the end of each session, at the end of the program and six months after completion of the program are used to evaluate the usefulness of the information taught and the likelihood that participants would use the new information. Most recently, the scores indicate that attitudes and skills improve in more than 85% of participants!
Our programs have received national recognition for excellence and effectiveness. Parent education classes provide one of the best methods for reaching large numbers of parents (at-risk or not) and their children. Active Parenting Programs (well-conceived and professionally delivered programs) will empower parents and, as a result, will reduce the number of abused children, create stronger more nurturing families, and help ensure that our children are prepared to begin and be successful in school.
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