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Nurturing Parenting Programs

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The Nurturing Parenting Programs (NPP) are family-based programs for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. The programs were developed to help families who have been identified by child welfare agencies for past child abuse and neglect or who are at high risk for child abuse and neglect. The goals of NPP are to: Increase parents' sense of self-worth, personal empowerment, empathy, bonding, and attachment. Increase the use of alternative strategies to harsh and abusive disciplinary practices. Increase parents' knowledge of age-appropriate developmental expectations. Reduce abuse and neglect rates.
NPP instruction is based on psycho-educational and cognitive-behavioral approaches to learning and focuses on "re-parenting," or helping parents learn new patterns of parenting to replace their existing, learned, abusive patterns. By completing questionnaires and participating in discussion, role-play, and audiovisual exercises, participants learn how to nurture themselves as individuals and in turn build their nurturing family and parenting skills as dads, moms, sons, and daughters.

Participants develop their awareness, knowledge, and skills in five areas: (1) age-appropriate expectations; (2) empathy, bonding, and attachment; (3) nonviolent nurturing discipline; (4) self- awareness and self-worth; and (5) empowerment, autonomy, and healthy independence. Participating families attend sessions either at home or in a group format with other families. Group sessions combine concurrent separate experiences for parents and children with shared "family nurturing time." In home-based sessions, parents and children meet separately and jointly during a 90-minute lesson once per week for 15 weeks.