Program Profile: Criando con Amor: Promoviendo Armonía y Superación (CAPAS)

Source: National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/649

Evidence Rating: Effective - More than one study

Program Summary

This program includes two versions of a culturally adapted parenting intervention for immigrant Latino populations. The program is rated Effective. Both versions of the intervention were found to have a statistically significant impact on improving parenting practices, compared with the control group. Only the enhanced intervention had a positive, statistically significant effect on child internalizing behaviors. Neither had a statistically significant effect on externalizing behavior.

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Description

Program Goals/Target Population

Criando con Amor: Promoviendo Armonía y Superación (CAPAS), a culturally adapted version of GenerationPMTO (Parent Management Training Oregon), is a parent-training program for Latino immigrant parents whose children exhibit mild-to- moderate behavioral problems. The five primary goals of the program are to 1) promote parent–child positive involvement, 2) help children develop prosocial skills, 3) decrease children’s deviant behavior with effective discipline, 4) enhance parental supervision, and 5) help family members negotiate agreements (i.e., problem solving).

The first version of the program, CAPAS-Original (CA), is designed to incorporate two salient cultural values: 1) superación (increasing educational attainment and achievement beyond the parents’ levels), and 2) educación (raising children to be competent and respectful adults) with the specific parenting practices of Latino immigrants (Domenech Rodríguez et al. 2011; Baumann et al. 2014). The second version, CAPAS-Enhanced (CE), is designed to increase the program’s focus on cultural and contextual issues such as the impact of immigration challenges and biculturalism on the parenting experiences of immigrant Latino families.

Program Components

The CA intervention closely adheres to the GenerationPMTO program, which includes five core components: 1) skill encouragement, 2) problem-solving, 3) positive involvement, 4) limit setting, and 5) monitoring. The skill encouragement component involves encouraging positive behavior that promote prosocial skills and cooperation while preventing and reducing the development of mild, moderate, or severe conduct problems. The problem-solving component consists of collaboratively identifying solutions for unmet family needs and problems. The positive involvement component involves promoting close relationships between parents and youth. The limit setting component involves effectively disciplining children through use of mild, short, and consistent consequences for misbehavior. The monitoring component consists of regularly scheduled check-ins with children.

The CA intervention also includes the following supporting skills:

1. Effective communication: Parents listen to and respect each family member’s opinions and allow for compromise.

2. Emotional regulation: Parents control their emotions when interacting with their children.

3. Clear directions: Parents provide clear instructions, so their children know what is expected of them.

4. School success: Parents promote and support their children’s academic performance.

5. Mindfulness: Parents are attentive, nonreactive, and nonjudgmental in interactions with their children.

Consistent with GenerationPMTO, CA is delivered in 12 sessions over a 12-week period in both individual and group formats. However, cultural experts, translators, and other consultants examined the GenerationPMTO program manual and supportive materials and modified the program for linguistic appropriateness and cultural relevance in language and content. Culturally relevant expressions were also included in the adaption of role-play scripts (Parra-Cardona et al. 2016).

The CE intervention included all the sessions of CA intervention as well as two additional culture-specific sessions that related to immigration and biculturalism. During these training sessions, parents discuss immigration-related challenges and benefits and strategies for coping with discrimination related to immigration status. Parents also discuss the “culture gap” that exists between generations, with the promotion of biculturalism as a useful solution to addressing these issues (Parra-Cardona et al. 2011).

Because two culture-specific components were added to the CE intervention, two additional parenting skills sessions (motivational behavior modeling and problem-solving specific challenges) were added to the CA curriculum to ensure that the two interventions were equal in length and amount of training provided.

Key Personnel

Both versions of CAPAS are led by both a cultural adaption specialist, who is Latino/a, fully bilingual, and a resident of the target community and a GenerationPMTO trained expert with direct knowledge of the target population and 6 years of experience delivering the intervention to Latino/a families with young children (Parra-Cardona et al. 2018).

Additional Information

CAPAS is a culturally adapted version of GenerationPMTO, which can also be found on CrimeSolutions.gov: https://www.crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/596