Date on Paper
7-2024
Document Type
Doctoral Paper
Degree Name
D.N.P.
Department
Nursing
Committee Chair
Schirmer, Sarah
Committee Member
Corniel, Brittney
Author's Keywords
adverse childhood experiences; parents; substance use disorder; hope at home; parental stress
Abstract
Abstract
Background: Parents recovering from substance use disorder (SUD) are prone to neurobiological alterations that affect parental emotional regulation, increasing occurrence of harsh parenting, heightened stress, and relapse. Children with parents who suffer from SUD experience adverse childhood experiences (ACE), predisposing them to negative health and lifestyle risks. Implementing a parenting-skills intervention for parents in recovery can promote positive-parenting, reduce parenting stress, improve the parent-child relationship, and mitigate the effects of ACEs.
Setting: ChooseWell Communities (CWC), a sober-living community, in Louisville, KY served as the project site. Participants at CWC are sober parents with primarily young children under 5 years old, who meet weekly on Wednesday night for accountability and to learn techniques to maintain sobriety.
Purpose: This quality improvement project was intended to implement Hope at Home, a parenting-skills curriculum designed for parents with SUD, to decrease parenting stress and improve parent-child relationship to mitigate adverse childhood experiences in their children. This project intended to show that the Hope at Home curriculum could be well received by participants and feasibly and sustainably implemented at CWC.
Procedures: Hope at Home was delivered to participants once a week, for 8-weeks, at CWC during regular weekly meeting sessions. Each session lasted approximately 45-60 minutes.
Measures: Parental stress was measured utilizing the parenting stress index-short form (PSI-SF). Pre- and post-implementation data were compared to analyze the effectiveness of Hope at Home on decreasing parental stress, thus improving parental engagement, bond, and skills (American Psychological Academy [APA], 2011).
Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the pre-PSI-SF and post-PSI-SF at 12-weeks (p=.030). Although not statistically significant, there was a moderately negative correlation between sessions attended and post-8-week PSI-SF total stress scores and post-12-week total stress scores. Paired t-tests comparing male and female participant PSI-SF scores at each phase of data collection did not suggest statistical significance.
Discussion: The parenting skills intervention was well received by participants in which they reported high acceptance and agreeance to feedback regarding programming. Generalizability to practice and implementation in other recovery programs is limited as each program is unique. With improved adherence and consistency in participant engagement, more data would have been available to analyze of the participants. CWC intends to incorporate Hope at Home curriculum into their orientation process consisting of 4 to 6 sessions. Lessons will be taught by a board certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP)
Recommended Citation
Haas, Makayla S., "A parenting-skills intervention to mitigate adverse childhood experiences for children of parents in substance use disorder recovery." (2024). Doctor of Nursing Practice Papers. Paper 163.
Retrieved from https://ir.library.louisville.edu/dnp/163
