Professor Sharon Dawe
Parenting, emotional regulation and substance use: Investigating the process of change
Sharon Dawe is a Professor in Clinical Psychology at Griffith University, Australia and an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Child Protection, UniSA and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, UK. She has been working as a researcher and clinician in the field of substance misuse and mental health for over 30 years at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London (UK), National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW and currently Griffith University. As a research-intensive professor, she is involved in a range of research projects including evaluation of the Parents under Pressure program (www.pupprogram.net.au), assessment and diagnosis of young children with FASD, and the investigation of the impact of childhood trauma on parenting and child outcomes. Sharon is passionate about improving the outcomes for children living in adverse circumstances by supporting parents to manage difficult life situations.
The Session
Improving family functioning and outcomes for young children in families with a multitude of problems – such as parental substance misuse, mental health problems, and parental childhood maltreatment – is essential if we are going to change an intergenerational pattern of adversity. Parents with extensive substance use histories face enduring problems with self-regulation and early childhood adversity. These add complexity to one of the most challenging jobs in the world: raising young children. It is not surprising then, that traditional approaches to improving family functioning that predominantly involve teaching parenting skills is increasingly recognised as insufficient in complex families. The capacity to regulate emotions, and develop inhibitory control is both a predictor and a consequence of substance misuse. Combined with enduring adversity, parenting of young children can easily become insensitive and at times, hostile. In this presentation I will provide an overview of one of the Parents under Pressure (PuP) program with a focus on the development of emotional regulation strategies.
The PuP program was developed specifically for families facing multiple adversities. The two central tenets of the PuP program are a focus on emotional regulation and the enhancement of safe and nurturing caregiving relationships within the family. PuP has been delivered by over 400 nongovernment and government agencies in Australia and the UK. There is a growing evidence base for effectiveness of the PuP program across a range of populations that demonstrate improvement for families engaging in the PuP program. Notably, however, not all families show improvement. Thus extending the evaluation of whether PuP is effective, to a more nuanced analysis of determining who may respond best to PuP (moderator analyses) and causal mechanisms drawing from the PuP program logic (mediator analyses) is essential for further development of the program and informs future tailoring of this and other interventions.