UCLA FAMILY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTSemel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior
760 Westwood Plaza, Room 58-242
Los Angeles, California 90024-1406
Tel: (310) 825-0729
e-mail: cheinicke@mednet.ucla.edu
Christoph M. Heinicke, Ph.D., Director
The UCLA Family Development Project's mission is to break the cycle of violence, abuse and neglect among low-income families with a history of abuse or neglect. As part of that mission, the Project empowers first-time mother's approach to parenting so it can be joyful, intimate and child-centered. This is accomplished by promoting the effectiveness and mental health of the child's primary caretaker. Parents, who have and are still experiencing abuse, are helped to increase their own sense of efficacy and thus are helped to respond effectively to the needs of their children and break the generational cycle of abuse and neglect.
The strategy to pursue these objectives is to enhance the positive development of at-risk families by enhancing the mother's confidence and helping her deal with pre- and post-partum depression, anxiety and potential return to drug abuse. Work with the mother is done to increase her partner and family support and combat potential domestic abuse. In this context of increasing positive family interaction, the following parent-child relationships and the corresponding child developments are enhanced: (1) The parents responsiveness to the needs of the infant and the child's secure attachment; (2) encouragement of the child's autonomy, task involvement, and exposure to learning experiences, and the child's autonomy, task focus, and active learning. All of the above developments are seen as important in preventing child abuse and neglect. All of the above are also forerunners of the two-year-old's ability to stay in his or her seat, focus on a task, and take pride in his or her achievements. Moreover, in addition to the above, the mother's moderate-verbal as opposed to restrictive-physical control is stressed. Longitudinal research has shown that variations in the development of this two-year-old cluster predict variations in the grade school child's poor concentration and disruption of the classroom. Thus, early intervention is likely to mitigate these negative developments and enhance the child's social-emotional strengths and school readiness. Repeated assessment from pregnancy to two years show the positive results of the intervention (see Heinicke, Fineman, et al., 2001).
To realize the above objectives, the following steps are initiated: Mother's having their first child are recruited in the third trimester by the prenatal staff of the Venice Family Clinic and the Westside Family Health Center. The families are often poor and are from diverse backgrounds: Hispanic, Afro-American, Asian and Caucasian. Their partner support may be inadequate or conflicted. They may have a history of past physical and/or sexual abuse and have difficulty resolving the impact of these events. They are therefore at-risk for neglecting and abusing their child, but very much want to give their child more adequate care than they experienced.
A clinical social worker visits the home starting in pregnancy and continues visiting once a week the first year, and every other week the second year. She builds a connection, trust, and works on the issues presented by the mother. An operational manual guides the home visitor in the steps needed to increase the mother's sense of effectiveness as a person and as a mother to her child (Heinicke, 2002). Through observation, understanding, and modeling, the Project is able to work directly on the family-child relationships and the child's development. This comprehensive approach includes a free mother-infant group, monitoring their health care, and making referrals as needed, including psychiatric evaluation and psychopharmacology.
The Atlas Family Foundation provides operating funds for the period July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010 for the program: "Preventive Care to Alter the Development of At Risk Families", a collaboration with the Westside Family Health Center, Venice Family Clinic, and the Santa Monica School Infant Support Program.
Recent AFF grant: $39,030, June 2010
