Kansas Serves Native American Families

The Strengthening Families Program (SFP) is an evidence-based prevention program for caregivers and children ages 0-17 focused on strengthening family relationships. The goal of SFP is to positively impact family bonding, communication, and parental supervision. The program is delivered through 14 two-hour sessions that include parenting, child life and family skills training. Each session begins with a family meal and the program provided transportation, child care, incentives and referrals as needed.

Cultural integration meant that we offered the SFP curriculum in a space that honored and reflected Indigenous identities, values and culture. 

GROW STRONGER TOGETHER

All families are strong. In our program, "family" is defined by family. We welcome grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, or anyone who helps care for the children in your family to participate in SFP because we believe that ALL families grow stronger together!

Native American families are resilient. This means they often stand strong through facing systemic injustice and trauma. Systemic injustices include:

• racism and discriminations,
• historical trauma (injustices that happened to Natives throughout history)
• intergenerational trauma (trauma to relatives and passed down through generations)

Trauma often leads to stress, anxiety, depression, substance use, violence, or feeling not good enough. This program can be especially helpful for families who want to overcome these challenges of systemic injustices and grow stronger together.

Families were referred from child welfare agencies, behavioral health treatment centers, courts, tribal health and social services, and other programs, such as early childhood. In addition, families signed up directly after learning about the program through word of mouth or community events.

Federal funding prioritized serving Native American families with children ages 0-17 in, or at risk of, out-of-home placement with a case plan goal of reunification or guardianship and affected by caregiver/family/community substance use.

KSNAF recruited, trained and supported Indigenous individuals to offer SFP within tribal communities and for tribal populations in other sites. Initially, the program was offered in-person on reservations and in an urban community at sites that were convenient and familiar to participants (e.g. Boys and Girls Club). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the program was adapted for virtual deliver through Zoom. In this format, families were provided with devices, signal boosters and other technology supports to facilitate participation. Virtual deliver allowed families members living in other states to participate with their local relatives. 

We conducted a local evaluation, based on project and community interests and needs to understand if our culturally integrated delivery of SFP was having the intended outcomes of positively supporting and impacting Native American children and families. The local evaluation included a process evaluation, staff and caregiver interviews, and other well-being assessments. In addition, our funder required participation in a cross-site evaluation (with other projects led by Mathematica) using specific assessments and administrative data (child welfare records).This study was approved the KU and Haskell Institutional Review Boards and was reviewed by tribal partners.

Collecting this information will help tribes and agencies to better understand and meet the needs of the families they serve and help to demonstrate the effectiveness of providing support for Native families to stay together and connected.

For more information about the evaluation, contact Dr. Amy Mendenhall at amendenhall@ku.edu.

After completing SFP adults reported:

• significantly decreased caregiver stress
• significantly increased empathy toward their children's needs
• improvement in their child's hyperactivity and inattentive behavior

Of adults who completed a satisfaction survey:

• 79% said the program helped them as a parent "a lot" or "extremely"
• 82% said the program helped their family "a lot" or "extremely"
• 100% would recommend the program to other families