The Potential Benefits of Parenting Programs for Grandparents: Recommendations and Clinical Implications.

Evidence-based parenting programs (EBPPs) have helped improve the emotional, social, and behavioral outcomes of children by providing positive parenting knowledge and skills to parents. However, not all parents can participate in parenting programs, as such the field of parenting research needs to look at other environmental factors that can influence child behavior. Grandparents are an example of one such factor that can help with childhood outcomes. Grandparents provide the single most amount of child care to children in Australia, and this trend is echoed in other Western cultures such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This papers aims to extend the knowledge base on parenting by focusing on the impact grandparents can have on families. Specifically, this paper focuses on the following five key areas: (a) the role of grandparents in Western Cultures; (b) the relationship between grandparents' and parents; (c) interventions that are available for grandparents to assist them in their caregiving roles and whether they are effective; (d) provide recommendations to EBPPs in order to modify to the population of grandparents; and (e) discuss clinical and ethical implications of working with grandparents. Collectively, this paper will demonstrate how grandparents can be utilized in a positive way to help children and support families by providing them with access to modified EBPPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]