Chaos during the COVID-19 outbreak: Predictors of household chaos among low-income families during a pandemic

Impact of COVID-19 on Referral Patterns and Service Delivery for an Integrated Behavioral Health Program

The emergence and rapid spread of COVID-19 led to unprecedented changes for families and systems of care. This study sought to understand the needs of families participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) before and during the pandemic and considers the impact remote service delivery has on access to an integrated behavioral health intervention to support the psychosocial needs of children and caregivers. Needs for referral varied significantly pre- and post-pandemic onset. Analyses revealed that significantly more referrals were made regarding social determinants of health after the onset of COVID-19 (13.8%) compared with prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (4.1%, p < .05). Providers' transition to telehealth services sufficiently served WIC families.

[Families with Increased Parenting Stress and Conflict Potential: a Target Group for Psychosocial Support Services?]

STUDY AIM

Psychosocial stress can complicate the first phase of life for young families. One group that has received little attention so far are families with increased parental stress and conflict potential. This paper aims to 1) classify knowledge and use of support services for families with increased parental stress and conflict potential and 2) describe the psychosocial characteristics and parenting behaviours of these families.

METHODS

For this purpose, data from a representative cross-sectional study in 2015 with n=7 549 families as well as the follow-up study with n=905 families were analyzed. Parents who took their child to a pediatrician's office for a screening examination (U3-U7a) completed a written questionnaire. Knowledge and use of services were assessed using four pre-defined stress groups (unstressed, socioeconomically stressed, with parental stress and conflict potential, and highly burdened).

RESULTS

Families with increased parental stress and conflict potential are less likely to receive support offers. Despite high knowledge of selective prevention services, they use these offers less frequently than socioeconomically or highly stressed families. They are more likely to report dysfunctional parenting behaviors.

CONCLUSION

This raises the question of whether families with increased parental stress and conflict potential receive too little support because they have no clearly visible need for help or whether they are adequately provided for due to the high socioeconomic resources, service knowledge, and use of universal medical and family education services. The results provide important information for the care of families in various stressful situations and contribute to the assessment of the need for support.

Family Engagement in Services During COVID-19: A Mixed-Methods Study of Caregiver and Staff Perspectives

INTRODUCTION

We examined changes in family engagement before versus during the pandemic in pediatric and family services and perceived facilitators and barriers to family engagement.

METHOD

We employed a mixed-methods assessment of staff and caregiver perspectives related to pediatric and family medicine clinics and family resource centers in rural northern New England. We used narrative synthesis to analyze qualitative interviews (n = 29) and descriptive statistics for quantitative surveys (n = 108).

RESULTS

Staff felt they were not doing as well at engaging families during versus prepandemic, identifying numerous facilitators and barriers. We found differences in resources used by families before versus during the pandemic. We identified discordant perspectives between caregivers and staff regarding how well clinics and centers identified and responded to family needs.

DISCUSSION

Leaders in pediatrics, advanced practice nursing, and related fields can draw on our findings to decide what services and modalities they provide for postpandemic.

Influence of home chaos on preschool migrant children's resilience: A moderated mediation model

Increasing attention has been drawn to the development of preschool migrant children's resilience recently. Resilience refers to the positive internal strengths and qualities of individuals in adverse situations, and is an essential psychological quality for preschool migrant children to cope with adversity. Home chaos as a risk factor, has an important impact on the development of individual's resilience, but the specific mechanisms under which home chaos works have yet to be explored, especially for preschool migrant children. Based on resilience model theory, 3,135 preschool migrant children and their families were surveyed and a moderated mediating effect mode was constructed to test the effect of home chaos on preschool migrant children's resilience. The results showed that after controlling for gender and age, home chaos significantly and negatively predicted preschool migrant children's resilience. Family resilience played a mediating role in the relationship between home chaos and preschool migrant children's resilience. Meanwhile, social support positively moderated the mediating effects of family resilience. The findings of this study suggested that low home chaos was conducive to promoting family resilience, which in turn fostered children's resilience, and that social support could play its protective role in weakening the negative effects of home chaos and this had certain guiding implications for the development of resilience in preschool migrant children.

Assessment of Parent-Teacher Relationships in Early Childhood Education Programs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Relationships between families and schools are important in the educational experiences of young children. However, the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2019 and spread rapidly around the world disrupted many families, teachers, early childhood programs, and other child-support institutions. There is much to be learned on how this pandemic specifically affected parent-teacher relationships. This study examined whether parent, teacher and other program characteristics had an impact on early childhood parents' ratings of the quality of their relationships with teachers. Results suggest that parent's education, income, age of child, location of the center and distance learning availability, impacted how parents perceived their relationships with teachers. Supporting parents' home environments may be one effective strategy for promoting positive relationships between parents and teachers in times of challenges.

Adapting to Adversity: Effects of COVID-19 on Parenting in Chile

The pandemic outbreak in March 2020 and its associated sanitary regulations and restrictions triggered an abrupt and significant change for society in general and for families' organization in particular. In Chile, the Santiago Metropolitan District was under a strict lockdown that involved the closure of the entire educational system. From a systemic-family stress perspective, the impact of these changes might have consequences not only for each individual family member, but for the parental dynamic and, consequently, for children's well-being. This paper presents the results of a follow-up study showing changes in self-reported parental depression and the perceived home organization of mothers and fathers assessed at three different moments: before the pandemic, at the initial outbreak, and after 1 month of strict lockdown. Relevant moderators were explored using linear mixed models to understand the within-subject changes in mothers' and fathers' self-reports across the different assessment times. Financial strain, personality traits of self-criticism and dependency, previous parent-child quality interaction, recent major stressful events, and number of children are highlighted as relevant factors that moderate changes in home chaos and parental mental health perception. Significant risks and protective factors are described for fathers and mothers. The use of pre-pandemic measures as baseline levels enabled the identification of personal and family characteristics that were related to better outcomes. The results help increase our understanding of the sanitary regulations' impacts on the family system and identify vulnerability indicators that should be considered.

The risks and opportunities of the COVID-19 crisis for building longitudinal evidence on today's early childhood education programs

In the United States, the long-term effects of early childhood programs have been given particular weight in research on early childhood education and in policy debates about the value of prekindergarten. Many research teams were building the evidence base on U.S. early childhood programs to inform that discussion when studies were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we describe the theoretical and practical risks the COVID-19 pandemic poses for longitudinal studies of preschool intervention programs. We also discuss the potential opportunities the crisis offers by introducing new variation in postprogram experiences for addressing new questions. The article intersects the resilience and disaster literatures with theoretical frameworks for the persistence of preschool effects. We conclude with recommendations for how longitudinal studies of cohorts affected by COVID-19 can enhance our understanding of the mechanisms behind the persistence of preschool effects.

Kindliche Verhaltensauffälligkeiten im ersten Lebensjahr und mütterliche Belastung in der Zeit der COVID-19-Pandemie

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Die COVID-19-Pandemie stellte in vielen Bereichen eine Belastung für Familien dar, insbesondere durch die einschneidenden Beschränkungen zu Beginn. Fragestellung: Wie wirkte sich dies auf die Belastung von Müttern mit Kindern im ersten Lebensjahr und auf die kindliche Verhaltensregulation aus? Methode: In einer Online-Befragung schätzten 577 Mütter das Schrei-‍, Schlaf- und Fütter-/Essverhalten ihrer Kinder ( M = 7.3; 0 – 12 Mon., SD = 3.25) und ihre eigene Belastung ein, zudem Stresserleben, depressive Symptomatik, Partnerschaftszufriedenheit und Bonding. Ergebnisse: Schlafprobleme traten bei 21.7 %, schwer tröstbares und häufiges Schreien bei 12.3 % und exzessives Schreien bei 1.6 % der Kinder auf. Mindestens jede fünfte Mutter fühlte sich durch Schreien oder Schlafprobleme belastet. Mehr Stress, beeinträchtigtes Bonding und weniger Partnerschaftszufriedenheit erklärten 17 – 21 % der Varianz der mütterlichen Belastung durch Schrei- und Schlafverhalten. In der Zeit der stärksten Beschränkungen zeigte sich signifikant mehr Belastung in der Gruppe von Müttern, die von vermehrtem Schreien und verlängerter Einschlaflatenz berichteten, sowie mit mindestens einem weiteren Kind im Haushalt (MANOVA). Diskussion und Schlussfolgerung: Pandemiebedingt belastend für Mütter im ersten Jahr scheinen eingeschränkter Zugang zum Versorgungssystem, die Betreuung von mehr als einem Kind sowie das Alter des Kindes zu sein, während eine gute Beziehung zum Kind (Bonding) und/oder zum Partner (Partnerschaftszufriedenheit) abmildernd wirken.