Young children, especially infants and toddlers are most at risk for abuse or neglect, and young parents may be less equipped to face the challenges of parenting. The purpose of this project is to evaluate outcomes for a cohort of nine community-based prevention programs and identify promising practices. The focus is on parents under age 30 with children under age 6. Each program is unique but shares a common element—use of a strengths based approach to promote family protective factors.

Evaluation data include pre- and posttest measures of family protective factors and interviews with program staff. Program approach, treatment dosage, initial level of family risk and protective factors, and demographic characteristics will be used to predict family outcomes. This project is funded by the Hawai‘i Children’s Trust Fund.