Qualitative Analysis of the Parents Anonymous® California Parent & Youth Helpline®

The Covid-19 Pandemic introduced unique stressors into the lives of California parents and youth. In an effort to mitigate some of those stressors, Parents Anonymous® launched the California Parent & Youth Helpline (“the Helpline”), a free service that offers a combination of telephone, live chat and text-based emotional support. This report highlights the most common problems that prompted calls/texts/live chats to the Helpline and describes how the counselors used a combination of research-based psychological practices and parenting strategies to support families in resolving conflicts, building resilience, addressing mental health crises, and promoting safety and well-being during one of the most isolating and challenging times for families in modern California history. The California Parent & Youth Helpline is part of the nonprofit’s statewide First Responder System program for families that also includes Parents Anonymous® weekly online support groups for parents and their children and youth of all ages. 

The purpose of the California Parent & Youth Helpline is to offer 7-day a week, 12-hour a day, culturally-responsive emotional support. Services are provided by clinically trained counselors as a therapeutic intervention. The program model helps parents and youth to build on their own strengths to solve their own problems, rather than operating as an advice line. The model includes referrals to Parents Anonymous® Groups and other services to help families with resolving problems like inadequate access to housing or food, but the most important niche of the service is as a therapeutic intervention. 

Past research has shown that Parents Anonymous® support groups significantly reduce the risk of child maltreatment (Burns et al. 2021). The Helpline adheres to the same principles, and uses the same strategies, as the support groups. As with the groups, the four therapeutic processes behind the Helpline are mutual support (participants receive and give support), parent leadership, shared leadership, and personal growth and change. The Helpline uses a variety of research-based parenting interventions, and established mental health and well-being interventions, such as encouraging quality family time and teaching self-care. The Parents Anonymous® intervention is designed to address multiple well-researched routes for improving child outcomes. The intervention introduces parents to basic parenting skills, such as techniques for providing consistent discipline. They also work on improving parent sense of self-efficacy, which gives parents the confidence to persist in using the skills they have developed. In addition, the intervention addresses barriers to effective parenting, notably anxiety and depression. And finally, the intervention works to improve the relationship between children and their parents. Children do better when they believe their parent cares about them, and when children feel better, it can reinforce parents’ positive behaviors, thus contributing to long-term change (Sandler et al. 2011). 

The program served 10,356 parents, youth and children from every county in California, and although most callers/texters chose not to disclose their race or ethnicity, the participants are reflective of the diversity of California. Of the participants who did disclose their race or ethnicity, a majority were Latinx. This may be reflective of Parents Anonymous® longstanding history of serving Latinx parents, children and youth in Southern California or may relate to the need for mental health services among Latinx families in California. Program staff speak English and Spanish and served families in both languages as needed. Translation services were available to parents, youth and children who did not speak either language. 

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Emotional support helplines are a longstanding strategy for supporting parents, but few studies have measured how much these programs work to address negative feelings in parents. Drawing on a sample of 281 helpline calls from parents to the California Parent and Youth Helpline^®, the authors analyzed changes in emotions expressed through language, while parents spoke to a counselor. The authors used a sequential explanatory mixed methods design. They worked with a Natural Language Inference (NLI) model, BART, to measure and quantitatively display changes in feelings parents express. They found that 85% of the parents made more positive statements as the call proceeded. The authors tested BART by measuring its rate of agreement with qualitative coding by the authors and against a codex constructed by service users. The authors discuss the implications of this study for addressing parental isolation and how the research methods could be adopted by other helplines.

California Parent and Youth Helpline^®

The California Parent and Youth Helpline is operated by Parents Anonymous, Inc.^®, a longstanding nonprofit agency dedicated to empowering parents, children, and youth through support groups, mutual support, and parent-led advocacy. All calls begin with the counselor thanking the caller for their willingness to seek help and praising them for their proactive efforts to look out for their child by requesting support. In a typical call, the counselors might start, as needed, by de-escalating the parent’s anxiety, anger, or other negative emotions through validation and mindfulness techniques. The counselors repeatedly express empathy with the parents about the things that they are finding challenging. The counselors also discuss possible solutions with the parent, help the parent to process any feelings they have about the problem, and form a plan for the parents’ next steps in getting help and support. The service is free to anyone in California who is either a parent, a youth, or a child. The Helpline typically receives over 1,000 calls a month from parents and youth in every county in California. In addition, some parents and youth text the Helpline. Demographic information on the callers is not available because the counselors do not do a formal intake with callers. Callers find the service through Google advertisements and from referrals from other governmental and nonprofit agencies (Parents Anonymous, Inc., 2023).

The California Parent and Youth Helpline is staffed by Master’s level counselors, who all have degrees in social work, psychology, counseling, or marriage and family therapy and who are trained in Parents Anonymous’ model. The counselors are supervised by a PsyD-level clinician and receive weekly clinical supervision. Rather than giving advice, the counselors try to support the parents in feeling empowered to craft their own solutions (Parents Anonymous, Inc., 2023).

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In the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, Supported Evidence-Based Parents Anonymous® positively impacts Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Parenting. Parents Anonymous® is effective in addressing child safety and the prevention of child abuse and neglect and is eligible for matching federal funds in every state Family First plan. Furthermore, Parents Anonymous®  has the capacity to implement, ensure model fidelity, and collect vital evaluation data for any Family First Prevention Services Act jurisdiction. 

Research demonstrates Evidence-Based Parents Anonymous® to reduce subsequent child maltreatment substantiations by more than half as compared to parents who did not use the program. Even a year after leaving the program, Parents Anonymous® is a proven intervention to keep children out of the child welfare system and ensure child safety by addressing mental health, substance use prevention or treatment, and in-home parenting skills.

For further information on Parents Anonymous® implementation for Family First Prevention & Services Act, complete this form. 

Parents Anonymous® Group (Rating 3, Relevance to Child Welfare) in The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. This premier Clearinghouse with scientific review and clinical relevance lists evidence-based programs based on published, peer-reviewed research ensuring that the best interventions are available and utilized highlights Parents Anonymous® in 5 Program Areas with the Highest Relevance to Child Welfare: 1. Parent Partner Programs for Families, 2. Parent Training Programs, 3. Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (Primary) Programs, 4. Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (Secondary) Programs and 5. Interventions for Abusive Behavior.

A study published in Children and Youth Services Review (May 2021) by Cynthia Burnson, Sarah Covington, Bertha Arvizo, Jun Qiao (Evident Change), and Elizabeth Harris (Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation) examined the role of Parents Anonymous® in supporting child well-being and family stability.

“The Impact of Parents Anonymous® on Child Safety and Permanency” study found that parents who participated in Parents Anonymous® were significantly less likely to have new referrals or substantiated referrals to the child welfare system within a year of completing the program compared to those who did not participate. Parents who completed the program had one-third the likelihood of experiencing a new substantiated referral compared to non-participants. While Parents Anonymous® serves a range of parents, many participating families in the two California counties studied have prior interactions with the child welfare system. Within this context, the study findings suggest that the program supports families in strengthening safe and stable environments for children, potentially reducing the need for further system involvement. This study builds on over 55 years of research demonstrating that Parents Anonymous® contributes to positive outcomes for families.

“Effectively Preventing and Treating Child Abuse and Neglect by Strengthening Families: Evaluation Brief 2016-2019,” October 2019. Dr. Andrew Ainsworth, Center for Assessment, Research & Evaluation, California State University Northridge. Utilizing a pre-test/post-test with non-equivalent groups design, demonstrate that Parents Anonymous® successfully prevents and treats child abuse and neglect by strengthening families by increasing protective factors, family functioning, and child and parent well-being including increased mental health and reduced substance use and domestic violence addressing child safety, permanence and well-being and adult well-being for (1) Mental Health Prevention and Treatment, (2) Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Program or Services, (3) In-Home Parenting Skill-Based Program or Services (Occur Where the Parent Lives), and (4) Kinship Navigator Services.

“Development and Validation of a Wraparound Parent Partner Fidelity Tool,” Social Work Research. June 4, 2013. Polinsky et. al. This groundbreaking research is the only research of its kind to ensure the role of the Wraparound Parent Partner in thousands of programs nationwide to strengthen families with children with mental health diagnoses.

“Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect: A National Evaluation of Parents Anonymous® Groups,” Child Welfare, Vol. 89, No. 6, 43-62 (2010), Polinsky et. al. and the National Council on Crime & Delinquency, Final Report to Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Outcome Evaluation of Parents Anonymous®”, July 30, 2007, National Council on Crime and Delinquency. The National Outcome Study demonstrating the evidence of prevention of child abuse and neglect results for Parents who participate in Parents Anonymous® weekly support groups nationwide measuring significant decreases in risk factors (parental stress, life stress, domestic violence, and alcohol/drug usage); increases in protective factors (quality of life, social support, parenting sense of competence, nonviolent discipline, and family functioning) and for those parents with issues, significant reduction in parental distress, rigidity, and psychological and physical aggression towards children.

“Parents Anonymous® Outcome Evaluation: Promising Findings for Child Maltreatment Reduction.” Journal of Juvenile Justice, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 33-47. (2011), Polinsky et. al. The results of the National study conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency measured the positive effects of continued involvement in a Parents Anonymous® group for a diverse population nationwide. An expanded qualitative study of Latino mothers and fathers validated all quantitative results and added depth key aspects of the intervention including self-ethos, empowerment, and positive impacts on educational goals, economic stability and marital harmony.

Partnering With Parents: Promising Approaches to Improve Reunification Outcomes for Children in Foster Care (2009). This evaluation research was conducted by Elizabeth K. Anthony, Jill Duerr Berrick, Ed Cohen and Elizabeth Wilder at the Center for Social Services Research, School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, on the Contra Costa Parent Partner Program demonstrated some promise to shorten time in care for child welfare involved families based on the evidence of peer-to-peer support such as Parents Anonymous® Executive Summary and Final Report.