{"id":194819,"date":"2023-01-27T13:51:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T18:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=194819"},"modified":"2023-01-27T13:51:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T18:51:04","slug":"uconn-health-southington-teams-with-main-street-community-foundation-to-pilot-free-parent-group-sessions-to-improve-mental-health-of-parents-and-children-during-covid-19-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/01\/uconn-health-southington-teams-with-main-street-community-foundation-to-pilot-free-parent-group-sessions-to-improve-mental-health-of-parents-and-children-during-covid-19-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Health Southington Teams with Main Street Community Foundation to Pilot Free Parent Group Sessions to Improve Mental Health of Parents and Children During COVID-19 Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The new program at UConn Health Southington has a lending library and resources for parents and families.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Parenting is never easy, but it has become even more challenging during the never-ending COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cParenting is hard! It got a lot harder with COVID-19 struggles which have taken a mental health toll on both parents and children,\u201d says David P. FitzGerald, Ph.D<\/a>., assistant professor and Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic at UConn Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FitzGerald reports a steep rise of depression and anxiety among families during the ongoing pandemic and during COVID has received a tripling in parent calls seeking therapy appointments for their kids at UConn Health\u2019s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic due to increased stress levels.<\/p>\n

But pandemic or not, parents and children can at times experience elevated feelings of stress, anger, sadness, and anxiety. But even more so during a pandemic with such added stressors as home schooling and quarantine mandates says UConn Health experts.<\/p>\n

Given the uptick in demands for child psychiatry appointments during COVID-19, and not enough provider capacity to meet these higher demands, UConn Health experts wanted to work to increase access by offering parent group counseling sessions.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a generous $150,000 grant by the Bradley H. Barnes and Leila U. Barnes Memorial Trust at the Main Street Community Foundation<\/a> a new innovative parenting group pilot program has launched as The Child & Family Development Program at UConn Health Southington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Victoria
Victoria Triano, chairwoman of the Southington Town Council, speaking on Jan. 26 at UConn Health Southington.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cParents have great intentions to be advocates and teachers for their children. Having increased support and educational resources is critical for parents to stay on a productive path,\u201d FitzGerald stresses.<\/p>\n

On the evening of January 26 UConn Health Southington and the Main Street Community Foundation gathered together with local Southington officials and clinicians to celebrate the successful launch of the new, free parent group pilot program.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Victoria Triano, chairwoman of the Southington Town Council, spoke at the celebratory event calling the new Child and Family Development Program \u201ca gem\u201d for the Southington Community.<\/p>\n

The new pilot program offers several different parent groups, including those that help parents manage child behavior problems, groups that improve parent-child emotion connections, and support groups for parents of children\/teens with neurodevelopmental disorders, especially Autistic Spectrum Disorders.\u00a0The free parenting group program also offers free educational resources to help parents cope with behavioral issues during this pandemic\u2019s elevated time of stress impacting mental health of parents and children alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cParent training in child behavior strategy that is group-based is effective. Research shows that if you work with parents, you may be able to help them better manage their behavior and marry together their more effective behavior with improving their kids\u2019 behavior,\u201d says FitzGerald.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking closely with parents could really improve the social-emotional development of their children,\u201d says the new program\u2019s co-director Carolyn Greene, Ph.D.,<\/a> associate professor of psychiatry and clinical psychologist at UConn Health\u2019s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic whose research also focuses on emotion regulation and emotion socialization parenting behaviors<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. David FitzGerald of UConn Health speaking on Jan. 26 at UConn Health Southington about the new pilot program and its team of experts.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new program also offers parents referral to clinical services at UConn Health should they or their children be in need.<\/p>\n

The UConn Health Southington-based pilot program is leveraging in-depth training certifications co-directors FitzGerald and Greene received from Tuning in to Kids<\/em> and Tuning in to Teens <\/em>programs and their online platform resources of materials, videos, and handouts developed by Australia\u2019s University of Melbourne. These programs teach emotionally-intelligent parenting and assist parents in better understanding social-emotional development of their children. Plus, UConn Health Southington educational resources include a lending library for children, adolescents, and families.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents can indeed learn to understand their children\u2019s emotions better and in turn interact with their kids better daily and to also protect their social-emotional development as they grow,\u201d says FitzGerald. \u201cParents, as children\u2019s first teachers, can serve as emotional coaches to help their children and move them toward their own problem solving.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to FitzGerald and Greene parenting success is all about collaboration. Together, parent and child can work to identify their negative emotion, verbalize it, accept it, and figure out what to do together to help the child learn to problem solve. Also, parents should always steer clear of emotion avoidance or emotion dismissing. Plus, always instill positivity whenever possible to help guide children\u2019s future reactions.<\/p>\n

\"Mary
Mary Ellen Hobson, Chair, Bradley H. Barnes and Leila U. Barnes Memorial Trust Advisory Committee is also a former longtime employee of UConn Health.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The pilot program started this fall at UConn Health Southington and is already having a positive impact upon Southington parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents in our groups are really feeling better. Parents are learning together and from each other,\u201d FitzGerald happily shared. \u201cThey are seeing that they are not alone in their child behavior struggles and that other parents have their same issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been a lot of parent enthusiasm. One pleased parent shared with UConn Health that the parent group was \u201csent from heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are teaching parents on how to better collaborate with their child to be more effective,\u201d says FitzGerald. \u201cAnd parenting takes practice. We want to empower parents to feel confident, competent, and comfortable parenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cParenting is so important for a kid\u2019s identity- and all the kids within a family,\u201d stresses FitzGerald. \u201cWe need to ensure an<\/p>\n

adaptive path is taken and everyone in the family stays on trajectory. If we can identify a problematic behavior, we can work to regulate that behavior, and help kids have few conflicts at home, school, and with other kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Susan
Susan Sadecki, President & CEO of the Main Street Community Foundation, speaking at the special program’s celebration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next, the pilot program looks forward to further growing and expanding its resource library of tools for Southington parents and children and expanding their partnership with Southington Public Schools to offer greater opportunities for school personnel training and a resource repository for school professionals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The UConn Health Southington-based<\/em> Child & Family Development Program<\/a><\/em> is in the pilot phase. Southington parents with children ages 5-17 are eligible for the program. Interested Southington parents can call (860) 523-3783 for admission to the parenting groups. Parent groups meet at 1115 West St, Southington, CT.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new Child and Family Development Program at UConn Health Southington is already helping Southington parents cope and to learn parenting skills to assist them and their children experiencing elevated stress levels and mental health needs during COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":194824,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,2291,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-194819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-psychiatry","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 18:07:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194819"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194836,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194819\/revisions\/194836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/194824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194819"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=194819"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=194819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}