Study Description
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a program designed to enhance the well-being of grandmothers who are solely responsible for caring for their grandchildren when both parents are moved from home. The study was conducted using a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design method. The majority of the 529 female caregivers in this sample were African American women living on low incomes (Kelley et al. 381). The mean age was 56.7 years, ranging from 38 to 83 (Kelley et al. 382). Data was gathered before intervention and again after the treatment had been running for an entire year. Registered nurses, social workers, and other support staff made home visits as part of the intervention. The eight multi-item scales approach of the Short Form-36 was used to evaluate the subjects’ physical and mental well-being.
Findings
When the pretest and posttest mean scores on the SF-36 were compared, it was found that there were considerable improvements in the areas of vitality, physical impacts on role functioning, and psychological and emotional well-being. The caregivers were found to be motivated and with an increased readiness to do their work after the interventions indicating that they need to be accorded more support to improve their health. There were no significant differences detected for any of the other characteristics.
Conclusions
These early findings imply that grandmothers parenting their grandkids may benefit from an intervention that is carried out in the comfort of their own homes and is targeted to enhance health characteristics. For grandmothers who care for their grandkids, maintaining good health is necessary for their capacity to raise their offspring properly.
Interventions
The intervention involved home-based visits to grandmothers taking care of their children to educate them about suitable measures to live a healthy and fulfilling life. The program took 12 months and targeted mental and physical well-being to create and foster positive change in communities and families where grandmothers are the caregivers. Those involved were social workers and registered nurses, performing a series of group participation and parenting classes. The communication was structured appropriately to ensure all participants were positively impacted by training the coaches on how to approach the situation. Assessments were done, and the grandmothers were taught corrective interventions to ensure they could cope and handle related challenges.
Work Cited
Kelley, Susan J., Deborah M. Whitley, and Peter E. Campos. “Grandmothers Raising Grandchildren: Results of an Intervention to Improve Health Outcomes.” Journal of Nursing Scholarship 42.4 (2010): 379-386.