Feasibility, Acceptability, and Effectiveness of Adding an Evidence-Based Parent/Caregiver Program for Bereaved Families to Usual Community-Based Services

Abstract

This paper briefly describes the development of the Resilient Parenting for Bereaved Families program (RPBF) and presents an evaluation of adding the RPBF to usual care (UC) provided by community agencies supporting families of bereaved children. The RPBF was adapted from the caregiver component of a family program that demonstrated significant benefits for parentally children and their parents in a randomized controlled trial. The current study found that the implementation of the RPBF program was feasible for implementation by community providers and was highly acceptable to caregivers. Subgroups of caregivers ( n = 44) who received the RPBF in addition to UC (i.e., child groups and caregiver support groups) reported greater improvement in quality of parenting and complicated grief and reductions in children’s behavior problems as compared with caregivers ( n = 30) who received UC only. Improvement in parenting mediated the RPBF program’s effect to reduce children’s behavior problems.