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The Texas Nurturing Program Research Center was formed as a way to communicate with clients, agencies, and stakeholders news about historical and recent studies and evaluations, and to inform you about current happenings with the AAPI and Nurturing Programs across states and areas.  Please direct questions to our Senior Research Analyst, Dr. Kristin Grayson, M.Ed., MBA, Ph.D, at fnctx20@gmail.com.

The Family Nurturing Center of Texas is dedicated to excellence in the field of the helping professions through research, education, consulting and training services.

Call for Research & Partnerships

The FNC-TX Research Center continues to conduct NPP research to meet the requirements of the Title IV – E Preventions Services Act.

If you have research to share or a desire to collaborate with your NPP data to conduct continuing research, please contact us with the details and we will be in touch with you soon.

Read the 2019 FFPSA NPP Review Letter

Available Research

Prenatal, Birth through Age 5

The Family Nurturing Center of Texas operates from a strengths-based perspective based on the philosophy that all parents have the ability, given the proper instruction and support, to be nurturing parents. Within the company’s mission statement is the belief that all children deserve to grow up in families that reinforce their self-worth and help them to work towards achieving their full potential. Given this mission, the Nurturing Parenting Programs (NPP) help parents relearn key components of effective parenting such as empathy, alternatives to corporal punishment and establishment of family roles. All of these themes are integrated and reinforced in the curriculum and lesson delivery for new parents, newborns, and children 0 -5 years of age.

Nurturing Parenting Program has the highest rating on the Compendium of Parenting Interventions as published in a report by the National Center for Parent, Family and Community Engagement. (2015). This report is a collection of parenting interventions designed to help Head Start Programs and Early Childhood Services Providers to implement evidence-based parenting interventions.

Parenting Curricula Review Databases, found on the Head Start Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, is the result of a project conducted by the National Center of Parent Family Community Engagement and completed with researchers from the Brazelton Touchpoint Center and the Butler Institute for Families at the University of Denver. The database contains reviews of almost 30 parenting education and home-visiting curricula and their relevance and alignment with Head Start Performance standards.

Research Reports

Ages 5 through 19

The Family Nurturing Center of Texas primarily provides training and consulting in conjunction with the Nurturing Parenting Program. The NPP are family-based and focus on increasing nurturing parenting skills. These programs include a variety of activities that work to build empathy, love and compassion, along with discipline to form healthy parent-child bonds.  The NPP are recognized nationally and used internationally as proven programs for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. The Family Nurturing Center of Texas offers Nurturing Parenting Program facilitator training, infant and early childhood mental health training, parent facilitation and parent coordination training compliant with the Texas Family Code, therapeutic services for individuals, couples, youth, and families, non-profit leadership coaching, clinical and reflective supervision, parenting assessment services using the AAPI, NSCS, and PARTI, and agency evaluations, including the NPP fidelity audits.

Along with training and consulting, FNC-TX has edited and updated the main curriculum that facilitators use with  parents. This includes a new version of the (age) 5-19 Facilitator Instructional Manual, Facilitator Resource Guide, and the Parent Activity Workbook including Learn and Share Infographics.

Nurturing Families Infant-19™ (NFI-19™)

Read about the updated Nurturing Families Infant-19 program 

Research Reports

Lists and Registries

As a research-based and trauma informed parenting program, the Nurturing Parenting Program is on many critical lists and registries required for use by agencies working with vulnerable children and youth and families in crisis.

Please see the lists below and related articles.

Research Reports

Many of the research articles in this document may be historical in nature or even duplicate studies found under other categories. However, this collection demonstrates that NPP have been used across many states for approximately 30 years. Please visit www.nurturingprogramresearch.com.

Additionally, currently the Family Nurturing Center of Texas works across many states and regions although a large majority of its work is concentrated in Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, California, and North Dakota. In the State of Texas, the FNC-TX currently has NPP Organizational Trainers in most of the state’s 39 LMHA (Local Mental Health Authorities). FNC-TX also regularly trains facilitators at Buckner, Catholic Charities, Head Start, Methodist Hospitals, and other county, state and nationally funded organizations.  In 2018, FNC-TX began a pilot program for five units of the State of Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) with a vision to enlarge to all Family Based Safety Service units after the results are computed for this first 2 years of the program. The State and FNC-TX expect to see a reduced rate of recidivism (families returned to DFPS) with the benefits and outcomes of the Nurturing Parenting Program. In addition to agencies, FNC-TX offers a 3-day NPP training for individuals, many who come from other states and internationally, 10 times a year in Austin, Texas and many more statewide.

Read the Texas Department of State Health Services: Texas Resilience and Recovery Utilization Management Guidelines for Child and Adolescent Services.

Science Behind NPP

FNC-TX recognizes that there are many essential components to training and implementing a successful program, particularly for families deemed “at-risk”. The articles in this section are intended to address the “science behind” the research.

FNC-TX uses this type of science to make the 3-day NPP training successful. FNC-TX also asks stakeholders to purchase a set of curricula for each participant in advance of their training. For support in implementation of the curriculum and improved outcomes with participants, FNC-TX always proposes a sequence of steps that will support their facilitators after the initial 3-day training. This sequence includes purchasing curriculum, hosting a 3-day training on the development of the NPP and how to deliver services, technical assistance virtual calls, a 4-hour webinar on setting up and using the AAPI assessment, on site implementation fidelity monitoring (observation of each facilitator working with a parent), unit/agency support meetings, and a final report on outcome-based changes in the pre- and post AAPI scores as well as written parental testimonies. The Family Nurturing Center of Texas concludes with a written narrative report and a Power Point presentation that the agency can use with their stakeholders and funders to show the outcomes of using the NPP as an intervention.