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The Nurturing Training and Research Center was formed as a way to communicate with clients, agencies, and stakeholders news about historical and recent studies and evaluations.  Please direct questions to our Senior Research Analyst, Dr. Kristin Grayson, M.Ed., MBA, Ph.D, at [email protected].

The Nurturing Families Center is dedicated to excellence in the field, through research, education, consulting, fidelity and training services.

Call for Research & Partnerships

The Research Center continues to conduct Nurturing Families research to meet the requirements of the Title IV – E Preventions Services Act.

If you have research to share or a desire to collaborate with research initiatives, please contact us with the details and we will be in touch with you soon.

Read the 2019 FFPSA NPP Review Letter

Available Research

Prenatal, Birth through Age 5

Nurturing Families Center operates from a strengths-based perspective based on the philosophy that all parents have the ability, given the proper instruction and support, to be nurturing parents. Within the company’s mission statement is the belief that all children deserve to grow up in families that reinforce their self-worth and help them to work towards achieving their full potential. Given this mission, the Nurturing Families Center help parents relearn key components of effective parenting such as empathy, alternatives to corporal punishment and establishment of family roles. All of these themes are integrated and reinforced in the curriculum and lesson delivery for new parents, newborns, and children 0 -5 years of age.

Nurturing Families has the highest rating on the Compendium of Parenting Interventions as published in a report by the National Center for Parent, Family and Community Engagement. (2015). Nurturing Families is also listed in Tex-Protect evidence-based Texas parenting programs. This report is a collection of parenting interventions designed to help Head Start Programs and Early Childhood Services Providers to implement evidence-based parenting interventions.

Parenting Curricula Review Databases, found on the Head Start Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, is the result of a project conducted by the National Center of Parent Family Community Engagement and completed with researchers from the Brazelton Touchpoint Center and the Butler Institute for Families at the University of Denver. The database contains reviews of almost 30 parenting education and home-visiting curricula and their relevance and alignment with Head Start Performance standards.

 

Research Reports

 

 

Nurturing Families 2nd Edition

Nurturing Families is family-based and focus on increasing nurturing parenting skills. These programs include a variety of activities that work to build empathy, love and compassion, along with discipline to form healthy parent-child bonds.  Nurturing Families is recognized nationally and used internationally as proven programs for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. Nurturing Families Center offers Nurturing Families facilitator training, infant and early childhood mental health training, parent facilitation and parent coordination training compliant with the Texas Family Code, therapeutic services for individuals, couples, youth, and families, non-profit leadership coaching, clinical and reflective supervision, parenting assessment services and agency evaluations, including the fidelity audits.

Along with training and consulting, Nurturing Families Center has updated the main curriculum that facilitators use with  parents.

LEARN MORE.

Nurturing Families™ (NF™)

Read about the updated Nurturing Families program 

Research Reports

Lists and Registries

As a research-based and trauma informed program, the Nurturing Families has a history of being on lists and registries used by agencies working with vulnerable children, youth and families.

Please see the lists below and related articles.

Research Reports

Many of the research articles in this document may be historical in nature or even duplicate studies found under other categories. However, this collection demonstrates that Nurturing Families have been used across many states for approximately 20+ years.

Additionally, Nurturing Families Center works across many states and regions although a large majority of its work is concentrated in Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, California, and North Dakota. Nurturing Families Center currently has Organizational Trainers in the 39 Texas LMHA (Local Mental Health Authorities). Nurturing Families Center also regularly trains facilitators at Travis County, SAFE Alliance, Any Baby Can, Renewing Family Strengths, Catholic Charities, Head Start, Methodist Hospitals, and other county, state and nationally funded organizations.  In 2018, Nurturing Families Center began a pilot program for five units of the State of Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) with a vision to increase Nurturing Families implementation by the Family Based Safety Service units. The State and Nurturing Families Center expect to see a reduced rate of recidivism.

Read the Texas Department of State Health Services: Texas Resilience and Recovery Utilization Management Guidelines for Child and Adolescent Services.

Science Behind Nurturing Families

Nurturing Families Center recognizes that there are many essential components to training and implementing a successful program, particularly for families deemed “at-risk”. The articles in this section are intended to address the “science behind” the research.

Nurturing Families Center uses this type of science to make the 3-day facilitator training successful. Nurturing Families Center also asks stakeholders to purchase a set of curricula for each participant in advance of the 18hr facilitator training. For fidelity support and improved outcomes, Nurturing Families Center proposes a sequence of steps that will support facilitators after the initial 3-day training. This sequence includes purchasing the most updated curriculum, attending a 3-day facilitator training on fidelity implementation, technical assistance, and after a year conduct a fidelity monitoring observation with a final report on outcomes.