Guide to Effective Programs
for Children and Youth

PARENTS AS TEACHERS (PAT)

OVERVIEW

Parents as Teachers (PAT) is an early childhood parent education and family support program for parents of young children (prenatal - age 5). Program components include parent educator-administered home visits, parent meetings, child health/development screenings, and a referral service for community resources. Experimental evaluations show that participation in PAT has small but positive impacts on parent and child outcomes. Compared to control groups, PAT parents have experienced more positive impacts in attitude, knowledge, and behavior outcomes, and their children have experienced more positive impacts in certain social, cognitive, and health outcomes. Impacts have been more positive for Spanish-speaking and low-income subgroups.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: At-risk families with children (prenatal through age 5)

Parents as Teachers (PAT)-originated in 1981-is a home visiting-based early childhood parent education and family support program for parents of young children. PAT is designed to educate parents about what to expect during their child's development, to teach parents ways to encourage their child's learning, and to foster strong parent-child relationships.

Individual programs have some flexibility in how they administer PAT, but each program must include four components. The first component is personal visits-a parent educator makes home visits to help parents understand and develop appropriate expectations for children's development and to teach parents ways to foster growth and learning. The second component is parent meetings, during which parents meet to share their experiences and gain new knowledge. The third component is screenings of children's development, health, hearing and vision. The fourth component is referrals to community resources. It is also a program requirement that parent educators attend training sessions administered by the Parents as Teachers National Center in order to become certified.

Over the last decade, several significant changes have been made to the PAT curriculum. These include: facilitating more frequent home visiting (from monthly to more often); developing a special curriculum for teen parents that has a strong emphasis on group meetings; translating program materials into Spanish; and incorporating new findings about brain development into the PAT curriculum, now trademarked as the "Born to Learn" curriculum for ages 0 to 3 and 3 to kindergarten entry. EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Though several studies have been conducted of PAT, only a few have been experimental in design.

Wagner, M. M. & Clayton, S. L. (1999). The Parents as Teachers Program: Results from two demonstrations. The Future of Children, 9(1), 91-115.

Evaluated population and Approach: In Northern California, an experimental group (n = 298) received PAT services-an average of 20 visits over the first three years of the children's lives-and a control group (n = 199) did not receive PAT services. The majority of this study's population was Latino, the average age of mothers in the experimental group was 25.3, and about half of the families were headed by single mothers. Data were collected from these families until children were 3 years old. In the second evaluation, participants were teenage mothers in Southern California (all were less than 19 years old, their average age was 16.6, and the majority were unmarried). About half were Latino, and the remaining were split fairly equally between African-American and white. They were randomized to receive one of four services: PAT (n = 177; an average of 10 visits over the first two years of life); case management (n =174; targeted to achieve positive outcomes for teen mothers); PAT plus case management (n = 175); or no services (n = 178). These participants were studied through the children's second birthdays.

Results: The two evaluations showed that PAT had little impact on parenting knowledge, attitudes or behaviors. They also found that PAT only produced small, mostly non-significant gains in child outcomes, except for a Latino Spanish-speaking subsample, which showed significant gains in cognitive, communication and self-help development as a result of PAT participation. Overall, significant, though modest, impacts appeared when demographic and other factors were controlled in multivariate analyses. The authors also examined program exposure and expressed concern about the number of families who dropped out of the program (43 percent in the first evaluation and 57 percent in the second). In the first evaluation, they found that maintaining participation through the end of the three-year program resulted in significant gains in children's cognitive, social and self-help skills compared to the control group. However, in the second evaluation, only children who were in the case management group or PAT-plus-case-management group-but not PAT alone-and persisted to the end experienced significant gains in cognitive development. Thus, the results about persistence in the program are mixed, as well.

Wagner, M., & Spiker, D. (2001). Multisite Parents as Teachers Evaluation: Experiences and outcomes for children and families (SRI Project P07283). Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.

Evaluated population and Approach: A third experimental study was conducted by SRI International in three different metropolitan areas. Across the three communities, 667 families with children under 8 months old were randomly assigned to PAT services or no services. Overall, the majority of families in this study were "at risk due to low income, teen parents, single parents, and other factors"; the racial/ethnic makeup was 58% African American, 29% white, 9% Hispanic, and 3% other. However, the characteristics of the participants differed greatly between the three cites.

Results: This evaluation revealed modest positive program impacts for parents across the three sites. For PAT parents, small positive effects were found for parenting knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. PAT parents with very low incomes had more significant positive impacts than their "more-moderate-income" counterparts. Participation in PAT also had small but significant impacts on a few child outcomes, such as higher ratings of social adjustment, greater likelihood of full immunization, and the reduced need for treatment for injury or for emergency room care. It should be noted, however, that "a substantial proportion of participant group families whose children were assessed did not actually receive home visits".

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION
 

Link to program curriculum: http://www.parentsasteachers.org/site/pp.asp?c=ekIRLcMZJxE&b=272091


References:

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (1998). School Entry Assessment Project: Report of findings.

Wagner, M. M. & Clayton, S. L. (1999). The Parents as Teachers Program: Results from two demonstrations. The Future of Children, 9(1), 91-115.

Wagner, M., & Spiker, D. (2001). Multisite Parents as Teachers Evaluation: Experiences and outcomes for children and families (SRI Project P07283). Menlo Park, CA: SRI International. [Available at: http://www.sri.com/policy/cehs/early/pat.html]

Web Site: www.patnc.org

Program also discussed in the following Child Trends publication(s):

Child Trends. (2001). School readiness: Helping communities get children ready for school and schools ready for children (Research brief). Washington, DC: Child Trends.

Halle, T., Zaff, J., Calkins, J., & Margie, N. G. (2000). Background for community-level work on school readiness: A review of definitions, assessments, and investment strategies. Part II: Reviewing the literature on contributing factors to school readiness. Washington, DC: Child Trends, Inc.

 

SUMMARY & CATEGORIZATION

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: prenatal through age 5 / Program age ranges in the Guide: prenatal, 0-5

Program components: clinic/provider-based, home visiting, parent or family component

Measured outcomes: education/cognitive, social/emotional



Program information last updated 3/15/07

   © Child Trends 2003