2018 Annual Family Support and Child Abuse Prevention Conference

This two-part session will provide participants with an understanding of the evidence base for specific parent-child interactions that support development and the strategies that can be used to support these interactions. Part 1 will focus on why warmth, responsiveness, encouragement and teaching are essential skills for optimizing young children's growth and development. This session will use video observations to practice identifying these parenting behaviors across the early childhood period and how to use data for decision making within a strengths-based approach.

Part 2 of this session will focus on strategies home visitors and practitioners can use to facilitate parenting interactions through active coaching within daily routine activities. Using video observations, participants will identify key practices that support parent-child interactions and how to use data to support a strengths-based approach. This session combines what we know about best practices in family support and early intervention home visiting along with an overview of reflective practice and supervision.

This session will outline the process to collect and analyze data contained in a statewide needs assessment of child abuse and neglect prevention efforts. The data compiled county-level abuse and neglect data, as well as data from US Census, Public Health data, as well as BRFSS survey data. In addition, qualitative survey data was solicited from parents, youth, and community partners. This analysis informed the strategic planning process and use of Iowa Child Abuse Prevention Program funds, and was ultimately used to identify funding priorities in a statewide Request for Proposals

This session will share the details of a recently completed randomized controlled trial on the Boys Town In-Home Family Services Program with 300 families as part of a partnership with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Risk levels at intake, program implementation fidelity, progress during intervention, and six- and twelve-month follow-up data were collected for all families. Results indicated the families who received the In-Home Program made more progress in reducing caregiver strain and child behavior problems and improving parenting skills than families in the comparison condition.