Implementing the ParentingWell Approach in Philadelphia
Summary
Nearly 1/4 of American parents who live with their children under the age of 18 had a mental illness within the past year. However, it is very difficult to provide family-focused mental health services. For example, providers report that they aren’t trained to discuss parenting and family life with their clients, and their organizations don’t have policies that support working with parents and families.
The ParentingWell Practice Approach is an approach for behavioral-health practitioners that incorporates conversations about parenting and family experiences when the practitioners are working with adults with mental illness. This study focuses on the adaptation and implementation of the ParentingWell Practice Approach in Philadelphia. We selected Philadelphia because it is a diverse city, and we hoped to adapt ParentingWell to make it as useful as possible for a diverse population.
Community reviewers identified benefits of ParentingWell for the Philadelphia community: “The materials provide a blueprint for clinicians to engage and ask questions about parenting and wasn’t too clinical.” “As a parent who is coping with mental illness, I think that if this program had been available sooner, I would have found stability and success in my parenting, daily life, career, etc., a long time ago.” The questions and activities were thought provoking.
Download the research brief, "Implementing the ParentingWell Approach in Philadelphia"