The Utility of the Family Empowerment Scale With Custodial Grandmothers

Abstract

The Family Empowerment Scale (FES) was developed specifically to assess empowerment in families with emotional disorders. Its relevance to custodial grandfamilies is reflected in the difficulties in grandchildren's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, wherein such difficulties may be explained via either reactions to changes in their family structure or in their responses to the newly formed family unit. Utilizing 27 items derived from the 34-item version of the FES, which had represented differential levels of empowerment (family, service system, community) as indexed by one's attitudes, knowledge, and behavior, we explored the factor structure, internal consistency, construct, and convergent validity of the FES with grandparent caregivers. Three-hundred forty-three (M age = 58.45, SD = 8.22, n Caucasian = 152, n African American = 149, n Hispanic = 38) custodial grandmothers caring for grandchildren between ages 4 and 12 years completed the 27 FES items and various measures of their psychological well-being, grandchild psychological difficulties, emotional support, and parenting practices. Factor analysis revealed three factors that differed slightly from the originally proposed FES subscales: Parental Self-Efficacy/Self-Confidence, Service Activism, and Service Knowledge. Each of the factors was internally consistent, and derived factor scores were moderately interrelated, speaking to the question of convergent validity. The construct validity of these three factors was evidenced by meaningful patterns of statistically significant correlations with grandmothers’ psychological well-being, grandchild psychological difficulties, emotional support, and parenting practices. These factor scores were independent of grandmother age, health, and education. These findings suggest the newly identified FES factors to be valuable in understanding empowerment among grandmother caregivers.

The Grandfamily Phenomenon: Grandparents Providing Intensive Care (Scoping Review)

“…Dále jsou hledány společné a rozdílné faktory spojené s psychologickým zdravím prarodičů žijících v domácnostech s vynechanou generací (Park 2009) a také vliv péče o vnouče na očekávanou délku života a blahobyt jak pečujících prarodičů, tak vnoučete (Worrall 2009;Gordon et al 2010;Arpino, Balbo, Bordone 2018). Součástí je i výzkum platnosti měřítka zplnomocnění rodin (FES), jeho vnitřní konzistence, konstrukce a výzkum struktury faktorů (Hayslip et al 2017).…”

“…Rodičovská soběstačnost, znalost podpůrných služeb a jejich využívání je důležitým faktorem pro zvládnutí prarodičovské péče o dítě (Hayslip et al 2017) a rovněž vztahové, kulturní, právní a sociálně-ekonomické otázky mají zásadní dopad na to, jak pečující prarodiče vnímají péči o vnouče (Worrall 2009). Také děti v prarodinách čelí mnohým potížím.…”

Intergenerational Scholarship

“…I particularly liked how this article "re-purposed" a strong measure from a different context and illustrated its utility among grandparents caring for grandchildren. The final article in this issue shares some similarities with Miyawaki (2017) and Hayslip et al (2017) in its exploration of intergenerational relationships and culture. Boucher (2017) offers an in-depth qualitative analysis of Dominican and Puerto Rican elders' perspectives regarding end-of-life decisions.…”

“…This pattern of findings did not extend to their own expectations for future long-term care, which seemed to revolve around entry into typical/mainstream residential long-term care settings. Hayslip, Smith, Montoro-Rodriguez, Streider, and Merchant (2017) completed a rigorous analysis of the Family Empowerment Scale (FES) in the context of grandmothers serving as custodial parents to their grandchildren. Utilizing a large and diverse sample, Hayslip et al found that the 27-item version of the FES generated three domains that differed somewhat from the original FES.…”

Validity and Reliability of the Turkish Version of the Family Empowerment Scale for Caregivers of Adults with Mental Health Issues (FES-AMT)

“…Family empowerment is gaining importance, especially in situations that cause disability (2). Empowerment is an important concept for the status of parents within health care services (1) because family empowerment has been shown to have a positive effect on different patient populations in various cultures (1,(3)(4)(5) Researchers have used various approaches and measurement tools to assess family empowerment (6). In cases of psychiatric disorders, family caregiver empowerment is a significant factor in coping with the nature of the disease.…”