Home-Start Parenting Program: Supporting Maternal Emotional Functioning in Raising Young Children

摘要

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of home-start parenting program to improve maternal emotional functioning in raising their young children. As a support program, home-start intervention focused on supporting mothers to improve their parenting capacities in a natural setting rather than coaching or teaching them. Although the focus of the study was the mothers, but the improvement of maternal emotional functioning was assumed to be in line with the improvement of children social-emotional functioning as well as other related developmental capacities. The study used the A/B single subject design toward three mothers of young children who had low quality of emotional functioning. The instrument used to measure maternal emotional functioning was Functional Emotional Assessment Scale (FEAS) which was previously modified. The effectiveness of home-start parenting program was analyzed by visual analysis technique which compared single score of mean of three subjects' performances occurring during baseline and intervention conditions. The graphic showed that home-start parenting program was effective in improving maternal emotional functioning. Based on these findings, the home-start parenting program can be recommended as an alternative intervention in early childhood parenting.