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Feasibility and Benefit of Parent Participation in a Program Emphasizing Preschool Child Language Development While Homeless

Contact author: Therese M. O'Neil-Pirozzi, Northeastern University-Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology, 20 Parklawn Road, West Roxbury, MA 02132. E-mail: t.oneil-pirozzi{at}neu.edu.

Purpose: This exploratory study examined the feasibility of homeless parents' participation in an intervention to increase use of facilitating language strategies during interactions with their preschool children while residing in family homeless shelters. This study also examined the intervention's impact on the parents' use of facilitating language strategies, regardless of parent performance on a single-word receptive vocabulary test.

Method: Using a prospective, pretest/posttest comparison group design, 12 parents were randomly assigned to a 4-session experimental group training emphasizing use of facilitating language utterances with children following vocabulary testing. Four parents were randomly assigned to a control group intervention.

Results: It was feasible for parents to participate in the intervention. Before the intervention, individual experimental group parents with poor test performance demonstrated relatively high use of facilitating language utterances. After the intervention, the experimental group increased use of facilitating language utterances during interactions with their children.

Conclusions: This exploratory study provides initial evidence that it is feasible for parents to participate in, and benefit from, a brief language-based group intervention while residing in family homeless shelters. Further study of language-based interventions for these at-risk families and of the possible impact of parent language functioning on intervention benefit is needed.

Key Words: parents, preschool children, homeless people, language

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