LAWRENCE — Across the country, mental health agencies are embracing the concept of family-driven care, which posits that families have a primary decision-making role in their children’s care and are actively engaged in the design of policies that promote quality care for all children. University of Kansas researchers have contracted with the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services to expand and test the effectiveness of a specific component of that concept to help families caring for children with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Researchers in the School of Social Welfare developed a model of family-driven practice, called Parent Support Training, or PST Best Practices Protocol, which has been shown to improve home stability of youth with significant mental health needs. A unique feature of the PST Practice is that it fosters peer support, allowing parents to help parents and to empower them to better care for themselves and their children with unique needs.
Family support services like PST have grown in popularity across the country since the mid-’90s when family advocates in children’s mental health became vocal about the vital role families play in their children’s well-being. Despite rapid growth of family support services, limited research and training curricula exist to show effectiveness or train the rapidly growing family support workforce. KU’s Social Welfare team has been able to define a specific model of the Kansas family support practice-PST, evaluate effectiveness and develop training for PST providers.
“Nationally, family-driven care is something that federal agencies such as the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration have an interest in because family-support practices have the potential to improve families’ understanding and utilization of existing services. This kind of engagement in services improves access and quality of existing social services,” said Sharah Davis, project manager of KU’s Parent Support Services and Training Team. “Some states, like Kansas, have funding in the public mental health system to implement family support services. As far as we can tell, no one has a clearly defined model that can be implemented statewide, or training, and a way to evaluate effective implementation.”
The team has developed tools to implement the training and partnered with the state of Kansas and KU’s Center for Online & Design Learning to develop a blended online methodology for PST providers. The training introduces concepts online first and provides an orientation and assessment of the providers’ comprehension. Researchers then design individualized training to practice the concepts and tools that were not well-understood from the online component. The providers may then attend an interactive live training or webinar where areas of needed attention are further explained and practiced.
The online learning modules help providers understand the Family Driven Paradigm, Code of Ethics and how to carry out the 34 PST Best Practices to achieve outcomes such as reduced caregiver strain, increased family empowerment, improved parenting techniques and enhanced social supports. In addition, the team of trainers provides post-training technical assistance and mentoring to assure the PST Providers are achieving intended outcomes.
Helping families is especially important to the KU team as several of those helping develop best practices and test the delivery have either children or family members with developmental disabilities.
“It’s just meeting the person where they’re at, helping them identify resources and to talk about the unique parenting challenges of having children with developmental disabilities,” said April Patton, PST provider and educational program coordinator at KU. “People are more open to other people who have been through their same experiences.”
In order to test the effectiveness of the PST model for families who give care for a person with an intellectual or developmental disability, a random sample of families were selected from a statewide waitlist. The KU team will conduct pre and post-intervention evaluations to determine how well the PST Best Practices worked to mobilize resources and identify individualized strategies to improve family outcomes. The primary tool in achieving that is an 18-question Needs Assessment.
The PST providers “become a walking tool kit with the purpose of connecting families to the services, information and resources that can best fit their needs,” said Tiffany Koloroutis-Kann, research assistant. “The idea is that you empower families to do it for themselves. Our goal is to be tech support providers and make sure the training and existing services are accessible and working to help people as much as possible.”
For example, Kansas has a good deal of resources to support families or caregivers of individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Families often do not know about the advocacy agencies or how to access services. The system is complex and can be confusing. In addition, some families may be better served in the mental health system but are waiting for services in the developmental disability system. PST providers can help families navigate by educating and coaching them on how to ask for what they need or model for them about how to get what they need. All PST interventions are individualized based on the needs assessment, level of empowerment, strain and social support families have when they are coming into PST services.
“It opens a lot of doors continually, not just during one training session,” Patton said.
Early results are promising, the team reports. Should the best practices model continue to show efficacy, it could set a precedent for a way to support key quality improvement features of the Affordable Care Act, such as effective patient engagement and quality care coordination.
“The more we learn about PST services the more apparent it becomes that the model can be applied to any family facing adversity,” Patton said. “The service gives hope to families – it is the voice of someone who has been through it before that believes that the family has the capacity to overcome.”
