PAPER #103 - THE EFFECT OF PARENTAL EDUCATION ON TRADITIONAL ROMA FAMILY.

Problem Statement: Massive unemployment, loss of traditional crafts ethnicity, keeping customs related to marriage at an early age resulted in many Roma families occurrence of extreme poverty and dysfunctional relationships with domestic violence Purpose of the study: the objective is to determine whether parenting education module adapted for Roma families can have the effect of increasing family cohesion and adaptability, increasing emotional parent-child relationship, reducing rejection or overprotection of children by parents. Research methods: 20 Roma children from a village in the north of the country were included in the research. For 10 of them, their families attended a parenting module for 10 sessions that focused on psycho-education, identifying ways of managing stress and anger, learning effective communication skills and conflict resolution, knowledge about child's needs and the effects of child's abuse, different styles of attachment and parenting and learning the ways of behavioral change. The variables were: cohesion and family adaptability, emotional warmth, rejection, overprotection evaluated by Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (Olson, Portner & Lavee) built on two dimensions of family functioning: cohesion and adaptability; short-Embu (Swedish acronym for Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran) containing 23 items and is built on three dimensions: emotional warmth, rejection and overprotection. Findings and results: The results highlight that the parental education module has a positive effect on improving the emotional bonds between parents and children: emotional relation between children and parents increased (p = 0.0001), increased family cohesion (p = 0.020), decreased rejection (p = 0.0001). No positive influence on the family adaptability or the overprotection behavior was found. The research includes a detailed case study. Conclusions: Parental education can bring beneficial changes in family relationships Very traditionalist, from many points of view, Roma family can capture the willingness to learn new behaviors that result in a better relationship with the children. Since childhood emotional relationships and parental models are often at the root of the difficulties of adapting adult parenting. These results are very important and useful especially for vulnerable groups such as the Roma community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]