Ethnocultural parent education in Canada: Current status and directions

Abstract

The delivery of parent education services to families from ethnocultural communities in Canada is considered. Despite the increased recognition of the importance of matching programs to the needs of participants, an extensive review of the literature revealed only five published studies evaluating parent education programs within ethnocultural communities. Because it was hypothesized that ethnocultural parent education programs exist in Canada despite the paucity of published data, community and tertiary care organizations were surveyed regarding their efforts in this area. The majority of service providers that responded to the survey indicated they do employ special provisions for parents from ethnocultural communities. The most frequently endorsed provisions included: addressing cultural issues within the program curriculum, utilizing ethnocultural facilitators, and offering the program in the first language of the participants. Future directions that follow from the findings are discussed. In particular, the need for empirical evaluation regarding the utility and acceptability of these cultural provisions is stressed.