December 14, 2020 (Monday),
2:00pm via Zoom
Abstract, rundown and registration:?Register link

PART 1: Emotionally-focused Group Therapy for Parents with Children at Preadolescence: Impact and Challenges
Parenting can be stressful when children start to pursue their independence at the stage of adolescence. Tension in parent-child relationship would probably heighten when there are clashes in communication between the two generations. The St. James’ Settlement – Youth Service conducted a pioneer project applying Emotionally-focused Therapy (EFT) in a 6-session parenting groups. To better prepare the parents to face the challenges in relating with adolescents, the project targeted at parents with children aged 10-12. The group objectives were to enhance the parents’ emotional responsiveness and to heighten their awareness of pitfalls in parent-child communication. Subsequently, it was expected the parenting stress could be lessened.

Mixed methods were employed to examine the impact of the intervention on parents and their children. Parents and their children were invited to fill in a questionnaire before the group commenced (T0), immediately (T1) and two months (T2) after the group completed. At T1, the parents also filled in a satisfaction questionnaire. Two focus groups were launched to solicit the views of parents towards the intervention. Forty-five valid sets of questionnaire from parents were analyzed using ANOVA. Statistical significant differences were found in parenting stress, communication, mutuality, parental control, and conflict and harmony. Indicated from the children questionnaires, there was significant difference in communication. The qualitative results revealed that the parents had increased knowledge towards the essential elements in emotional responsiveness, the primary emotions of their children, and the conflict interaction cycle. This understanding was impactful towards their parenting behaviors and attitudes. The application of EFT in Hong Kong parents and the challenges in conducting practice research will be shared in the presentation.

Presenters:

Grace Suk-man LEUNG, PhD, RSW, Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong.

Johnson Chun-sing CHEUNG, DSW, RSW, Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong.

Yick-man LAM, RSW, Senior Manager, St. James’ Settlement – Youth Services

PART 2: Evaluation on Interdisciplinary Complex Intervention: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Continuous Improvement
About the Project:
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust approved a total of HK$255 million to initiate the “Jockey Club End-of-Life Community Care Project” (JCECC). Launched in 2016, the six-year project aims at improving the quality of end-of-life care, enhancing the capacity of service providers, as well as raising public awareness on issues related to death and dying.
JCECC is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional and cross-sectoral collaboration to help enhance end-of-life care in Hong Kong with special emphasis on the interface between social and medical systems. Service models are being developed and shaped to provide holistic support to terminally-ill elders in the community and elderly homes. The goal is to enable the city’s older people to have informed choices of care and have an improved quality of life.

Abstract:
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is sometimes simplified and equated as the systematic outcome evaluation. It is an approach which guides clinical decision-making through integrating high-quality research evidence, clinical experiences, client’s value and preference and ethics. The process starts from the assessment, follows by the planning, intervention and evaluation. The evaluation should not be focused on the outcome, but also impact as well as the process. In EBP of social work practice, intervention is usually with complex and multiple components which pose challenges in evaluation.
Moreover, the concurrent intervention offered by other professionals makes the integration of evidence-based practice further arduous. In this presentation, the JCECC will be an illustrative example for EBP. Specifically, the process of how evidence and clinical experiences were integrated to design the intervention, the involvement of multiple disciplinary lenses to design outcome and impact evaluation as well the continuous improvement process in refining the complex interventions.

Presenters:
Amy Y. M. CHOW, Professor, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong

Iris, K. N. CHAN, Associate Director of JCECC project