The parents of youth we serve are from low-to medium income families and are at exceptionally high risk of losing parent-child attachment because of dysfunctional parents due to lack of education and failing to understand the personal, emotional, social, and psychological needs of their children. Nepali speaking parents have their traditional methods of parenting such as scolding, threatening and even corporal punishment which have severe negative impact on the overall growth of their children. This parent training program teaches modern methods of parenting and seeks to develop parenting skills and provide support to parents of young children of ages 0- 17 years old, reducing the negative lifelong impacts on children’s physical, mental and emotional health.

The severity of the problem is very high. The youth from such parents will have lifelong negative impacts on their physical, mental, and emotional health. Youth will have higher risk for psychological and mental disorders, poor academic performance, low self-esteem, violence behaviors, confused roles, failure to thrive, legal issues, failure to develop prosocial behaviors and social adjustment disorder. The improper parenting triggered child/youth neglect and abuse. The youth lack the knowledge of civic engagement to learn responsibilities toward their community and family incompetency, lack of family-based protective factors, healthy parent-child interactions, poor nutrition and mental health issues that culminates to depression, substance abuse, problem-solving issues and failure to navigate life independently.  These identified risk factors for our community youth are exacerbated by social determinants, including economic stability, race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status among marginalized refugee and immigrant populations. Of the 650 families of the youth we serve, 96% are living in households with low-to-moderate incomes. The increasing divorce issues, family disintegration, youth are left unattended and lack of care. The single mothers experience great challenges in work-family life balance and emerging needs of youth for personal development.

Impact to the Individuals:

• Negative lifelong impacts on children’s psychological, physical, mental, and emotional health.
• Youth will experience confused identity, social withdrawal, and fail to be successful. Become emotional and reactive.

Impact to the Families:

• Families experience stress and impact on their occupations and finance.
• Parental depression, lack of knowledge of child development and behavior.

Impact to the community:

• Community must spend lots of money in providing the services, cultural ethics and social norms are violated, resources may not be adequate and will have less youth to contribute to the community.

To implement this effective parenting program, CBS is supported by Utah Board of Juvenile Justice (UBJJ) and it is a community-based program and services purpose area to offer high quality services to the refugee and immigrant youth in Utah through individual volunteerism,

participating in group activities such as community gardening, community engagement efforts, and organizational involvement effective parenting from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. This program is designed to change dysfunctional parenting patterns that contribute to the onset, enhancing effective parenting, creating a conducive environment for youth to stay at homes through culturally adapted parenting intervention for immigrant and refugee populations by providing high quality services to promote family competencies, parent empowerment, and healthy parent-youth interactions. The program operates at 2530 South 400 East, South Salt Lake City, UT 84115 – Columbus Center, apartments and residents mostly on Saturdays and evenings of weekdays. We visit parents and youth in-person to assess their needs through motivational interviews and friendly interactions. This high impact program will have a long-term effect on the parents and youth, as they will be able to develop and improve their assertive communication, critical thinking, problem- solving, interactions with parents whose English is a second language through a family-centered and strengths-based approach. The program will target youths in elementary and junior high school levels in Utah. Program components Engaging civically and parenting knowledge promote family resilience through direct instruction and skills development. The enhanced effective parenting comprehensive 24-week curriculum is designed for parents of youth ages 0 – 17 to help them to obtain tools to manage their own stress and life challenges, developing the skills to nurture the physical, social, emotional and cognitive development of youth. During the sessions, parents will learn skills to cope effectively with stress by developing a greater ability to connect with others, creatively solve problems, communicate their feelings and needs and seek help and social support as and when needed. A trained professional parenting educator will meet parents once a week for 2 hours each week in family group members and small groups which include 5 parents per group. Each 2-hour session includes 4–8-minute welcome and announcements when the parenting professional helps parents get settled and ready for the group. Parenting professional will review from the previous session by checking in with parents about the strategy they had been asked to try at home during the previous week. Parenting professional (PP) will then review the topics for discussion for the current week and begin the discussion of and activities for the content outlined for the session. The PP will actively encourage parents to contribute their own insights by posing questions frequently and affirming the parents’ responses both verbally and nonverbally. The discussion topics range from self-care and self-regulation to handling children’s emotions and dealing with challenging behaviors. EEP discussion topics include the following sessions:

1. Getting started: The session discusses how parenting is the most challenging and most important job; how parents are the foundation of the family; and how positive parenting skills won’t come naturally, they are learned.
2. Nurturing: this means caring for ourselves. The session is about the discussion of how the whole family benefits when parents find ways to take care of themselves regularly.
3. Understanding stress: Here the family will know how stress is a normal part of life and how reducing stress helps parents feel more in control of their lives.
4. Stress and anger management techniques: This session is about the discussion of how stress is a normal part of parenting, how managing stress effectively is critical to parenting youth effectively, and how parents are responsible for teaching and modeling the coping process for stress.
5. Nonverbal technique discusses how effective communication begins with what the parents do – actions speak louder than words.
6. Communication: this session enhances listening skills with empathy.
7. Verbal communication sessions teach parents how words are powerful and important to use words thoughtfully and learn to communicate positively takes practice.
8. Child development: This session discusses how every child develops at his/her own pace and how understanding child development helps parents appreciate and have a realistic expectation of their children.
9. Positive Discipline: It lays the foundation. This session discusses how paying close attention to youth when they are doing well can keep them from “acting out” to get their parents’ attention. Here the parents need to be aware of possible solutions in order to bring positive changes in behaviors instead of unnecessary harassment and punishment.
10. Parenting styles: This session discusses the three parenting styles with outcomes of each style and parents will choose the appropriate style to implement that has greater positive outcomes.
11. Engaging in community gardening and involving youth in community volunteer tasks to instill the sense of responsibility toward community, helps parents understand emerging needs of their children and increase family competency, parent empowerment and family-based protective factors and healthy parent/child interactions.
12. Closure: Saying goodbye. This session discusses how engaging civically and developing positive parenting skills is an ongoing process and it is important to acknowledge growth and change in order to strengthen positive changes.

The Program Manager will be the main point of contact for this grant and will manage recruitment, staff and assure that goals and objectives are met, ensure proper reporting and manage the grant funds. Life Skills Coordinator will work directly with families and youth to deliver high quality services and interventions to reach target goals and objectives and manage all data collection for the program and ensure compliance.

Youth with disabilities and single mothers: The program emphasizes youth with disabilities by offering special attention and care and single mothers. We are committed to providing programs that are inclusive, welcoming, and accommodating, specifically meeting the dire needs of individuals with disabilities. The CBS inclusion plan includes a review of IDEA forms; check-ins with schools, and family program design like preparing for and making accommodations and observations to ensure specialized and quality services. CBS has a zero-tolerance policy to any forms of mistreatment, discrimination or violation of youth. The youth with disabilities will be included in the program and will be involved throughout the program. The length of participation and quality outcomes achieved by the youth with disabilities will be evaluated. Program Participant Input/Feedback: Families and youth meet with Life Skills Youth Professional monthly where they will discuss how the programs, share their perspectives and methods are working for them and they collaboratively make improvements.  Collaboration: We have a long list of collaborators with schools, Salt Lake County, University of Utah, IRC New Roots Program for community gardening, the City of South Salt Lake, Utah Refugee Connections and Refugee Services Office, DWS from whom we receive tremendous support and shared case management best practices. We will partner with external experts for the resources, we collaborate with UBJJ for resources and technical assistance and we will outreach to other partners based on the needs of the program and youth. We ensure to have a Memorandum of Understanding or Letter of Support with our role, time and resource commitment. Evidence-based Practices: All of the programs that families and youth will be referred to are evidence-based which includes:

1. Ways of improving parent/child’s interactions will be evaluated with evidence.
2. Involve both families and youth in planning to engage civically at the community activities
3. Family competency helps in appropriate parenting to strengthen healthy family lifestyle
4. Both families and youth experience family-based protective factors and support systems.
5. Youth with disabilities and single mothers have exceptional experience in stable support systems and access to resources anytime.

Trauma-informed Practices: The youth we serve in this program are trauma-informed and all program personnel will receive ongoing training about this care. We ensure that our professional trained staff prudently provide high quality care. In order to prevent fatigue, staff turnout and turnover, we will prioritize the emotional needs of our staff by supporting them with regular emotional safety training and providing recognition. Our community organization promotes the development and implementation of trauma-informed approach through realization about trauma and how it can affect people, and groups, recognizing signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma and resisting re-traumatization.   Our community organization promotes the development and implementation of trauma-informed approach through realization about trauma and how it can affect people, and groups, recognizing signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma and resisting re-traumatization.

The program team consists of Program Manager and Life Skills Program Coordinator who are solely responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating the program. The timeline of the Effective Parenting is as follows:

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