Incredible Years Wales:
The Welsh Centre for Promoting
the Incredible Years Programmes
Title:
“Using
the Incredible Years Programme with adoptive parents”
Presented
by: Jeanne Kaniuk & Norma Sargent, the Coram Institute,
London and Kay Henderson, Anna Freud Centre, London.
Abstract:
Adoptive parents in the UK care for a particular population
of children. This presentation is concerned with the children who have been
adopted out of public care. They will all have suffered separations, most will
have had insecure or disorganised attachments prior to placement. Many have
experienced abuse or neglect and many come from family backgrounds of mental
illness or substance abuse prior to adoption. These children present their parents
with particular challenges as they seek to nurture them and to disconfirm their
expectations of parental figures.
We describe the use of the Incredible Years Programme with groups of adopters.
A research grant enabled the team to monitor a series of five Incredible Years
Programmes, which were attended by a total of 46 parents from 26 families. The
research identified a number of adoption and attachment related themes that
emerged consistently in the course of the groups. The team developed additional
material for the use of group leaders and parents which was trialled in successive
groups. The adopters were contacted for feedback twelve months after they completed
the Incredible Years Programme.
At the start of the course 54% of the parents rated themselves, on the PSI (Parenting
Stress Index), as experiencing significant levels of stress, of which 70% was
as a result of child characteristics. In the pre- course measurement the SDQ
(Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) results showed 66% of parents reporting
some/high concerns regarding their children. Overall stress levels of parents
reduced after the course although this failed to reach statistical significance,
except as regards stress related to child characteristics where change was statistically
significant. In addition the increase in participants' parental confidence reached
significance. The children's scores for conduct disorder were also significantly
reduced. Parents reported high levels of satisfaction with the support and also
on the effectiveness of the strategies they had acquired.