Improving Family Well-Being and Child School Readiness: Power PATH Dual Generation Intervention

This project will test the proximal and distal effects of an integrated dual-generation intervention approach, Power PATH, in an existing Head Start University Partnership in Alabama. Dual generation approaches recognize the need to intervene with both parents and children in Head Start preschools, in order to improve parents' ability to provide safe and supportive caregiving environments and to prepare children for the transition to elementary school academically and behaviorally. Parents of Head Start preschoolers often have high levels of poverty, stress, and mental health needs (Yoshikowa, Aber, \& Beardslee, 2012) and their children are at-risk for academic, behavioral, and social-emotional difficulties (Aber, Jones, \& Cohen, 2000; Costello, Keeler, \& Angold, 2001; Morales \& Guerra, 2006). Thus, in this project, two evidence-based and widely-utilized preventive interventions will be adapted and thoughtfully integrated, in collabo-ration with Head Start personnel, to provide intensive, high quality services to Head Start parents and children. First, the Power PATH Parent Intervention program, adapted from Coping Power (Wells, Lochman \& Lenhart, 2008) for this dual-generation approach, will be implemented to address parental mental health needs, to increase parental employment and financial security, and to improve parents' ability to model effective social-emotional skills. The parent intervention will help parents create a positive and predictable home environment, and support their child's academic learning and emotional and behavioral self-regulation. Second, the Promoting Alterna-tive Thinking Strategies (PATHS) Preschool Social and Emotional Learning curriculum (Domitrovich et al., 1999) will be implemented in the preschool classrooms. PATHS is a universal, classroom-based curriculum that increases children's social-emotional competence and self-regulatory skills, leading to long-term social, behavioral and academic gains. The Power PATH program will incorporate both of these parent and child interventions, and will include opportuni-ties for the children to teach their parents the social and emotional skills they are learning in the classroom, to promote skill- generalization and transfer to the home environment. This study will also identify novel intervention mediators and moderators, essential for interrupting the intergen-erational transmission of chronic social stress, and will identify the best interventions for families, particularly during preschool when self-regulation skills are still malleable, and children's primary environments and physiological responses to stress are likely to moderate intervention effects (Bierman et al., 2008; Boyce \& Ellis, 2005; Porges, 2007). In summary, addressing sources of chronic stress in the parents of Head Start preschoolers (i.e., employment and financial insecurity, mental health needs, and family stressors) through the Power PATH dual generation intervention is expected to prepare parents to better support, shape and model their children's self-regulation skills and to better foster their children's school readiness, and to improve overall family well-being.