The International Parenting Survey–Canada: Exploring access to parenting services.

Abstract

This article presents results of a survey investigating parents' needs for parenting services, their access to and preferences for parenting programs. Canadian parents (N = 2,340) completed the International Parenting Survey (Morawska, Heinrichs, & Sanders, 2011) with respect to the youngest of their children who was in the 2-12 year age range. In this community sample, over a quarter of parents reported that they had consulted a professional about their child's behavior in the last year. Fifteen percent of parents had participated in some form of parenting program, although only a quarter of these programs were evidence-based. Parents' top-reported barriers to participating in a parenting program were lack of awareness and felt need, followed by practical barriers such as lack of time and access to child care. Parents expressed interest in a diverse array of delivery modes for parenting programs. Implications for enhancing access to parenting programs are discussed.Keywords: access to services, children, parent preferences, awareness of programs, parenting supportResumeLe present article expose les resultats d'une enquete sur les besoins des parents en matiere de services d'aide parentale ainsi que sur l'acces des parents aux differents programmes d'aide parentale et leurs preferences par rapport a ces derniers. Des parents canadiens (N ^ 2 340) ont repondu a l'Enquete internationale aupres des parents (Morawska, Heinrichs, & Sanders, 2011) au sujet de leur enfant le plus jeune se trouvant dans la plage d'âge de 2 a 12 ans. Dans cet echantillon de la collectivite, plus d'un quart des parents ont declare qu'ils avaient consulte un professionnel au sujet du comportement de leur enfant au cours de la derniere annee. Quinze pour cent des parents ont participe a une forme quelconque de programme d'aide aux parents, bien que seulement un quart de ces programmes etaient fondes sur des preuves. Les principales barri- eres citees par les parents concernant la participation a un pro- gramme d'aide parentale etaient qu'ils n'etaient pas au courant ou qu'ils n'en ressentaient pas le besoin, suivies de barrieres pratiques tels que le manque de temps et d'acces aux services de garderie. Les parents ont exprime de l'interet vis-a-vis une panoplie de modes de prestation de programmes d'aide parentale. Les impli- cations relatives a l'amelioration de l'acces aux programmes d'aide parentale sont abordees.Mots-cles : acces aux services, enfants, preferences parentales, sensibilisation aux programmes, aide parentale.One in five children experiences a mental disorder that disrupts their functioning in multiple domains; untreated, many symptoms persist into adulthood (Merikangas et al., 2010). Mirroring the situation in other countries, only 25% of Canadian children in need receive any services (Waddell, Peters, Hua, McEwan, & Garland, 2007). It is clear Canada has a substantial unmet need for services to address children's emotional and behavioral problems. A large body of psychological research has established that family envi- ronments both contribute to and are affected by children's prob- lems (Grusec, 2011). Children and youth with emotional and behavior problems are more likely to grow up in families charac- terized by parental psychopathology, child rearing practices that contribute to the child's dysfunction, aggression between parents, poor family communication, and high levels of parental stress (Kazdin & De Los Reyes, 2008; Piche, Bergeron & Cyr, 2008). To address these issues, a variety of programs have been designed to support parents in providing a positive environment for their children (Sanders, 2012). In this article we describe results from a survey of Canadian parents about whether they have consulted a professional about their child's behavior, whether they have at- tended a parenting program, the perceived barriers to accessing parenting programs, as well as the perceived usefulness of differ- ent modes of delivery of parenting programs. …