Club funded parenting programme fosters family harmony

8 May 2010

Developing preventive measures to minimise family conflicts is an important direction in building a harmonious society. To address this issue, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, in collaboration with the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), launched "FAMILY: A Jockey Club Initiative for a Harmonious Society" in 2008, a project designed to research, create and implement intervention programmes to promote family harmony in co-operation with various non-government agencies.

As part of the project, Caritas - Hong Kong and HKU School of Public Health have developed "FAMILY: Effective Parenting Programme", a pilot study with families in Tin Shui Wai and Yuen Long areas. Today (8 May), the team announced the study results and explained how parents could be effectively assisted in managing their emotions and improving communication with their children, in order to foster family health, happiness and harmony.

Eighty-six mothers who live in Yuen Long and Tin Shui Wai and have children studying at Primary 1-3 levels were invited to take part in an emotion management and parenting programme last year.

The participants were divided into two groups. The first 42 mothers participated in four emotion management sessions, each lasting two hours, while the remainder received no emotion management training, but were invited for a family outing.

The mothers were surveyed before and soon after the intervention, and an additional survey was done three months later. The results showed those who received emotion management training could better control their temper and avoid beating or scolding their children, compared with those who had undergone no training.

It was found that family atmospheres had significantly improved too, with the help of the intervention programme. Children were keen to accept the new parenting methods; fathers became more involved in family life; mothers learned better to control their emotions, which helped enhance their health as well as fostering family harmony. The two families attending the press conference today also told the audience how the programme had improved their family harmony and their homes are now filled with sounds of laughter instead of quarrels. 

The Club's Executive Director, Charities, Legal & Corporate Secretariat, Douglas So, said family intervention programme is one of the key components of the FAMILY Project. The project team worked closely with NGOs to help them develop, design and carry out programmes to strengthen family relationships in the community.

"We are delighted to see the effectiveness of the programme, which enables parents to learn correct parenting method and emotion management, and thereby improving parent-child relationship and fostering family health, happiness and harmony," Mr So commented, "The programme used evidence-based studies to support public health theory, aiming to design cost-effective and sustainable ways to promote Health, Happiness and Harmony (the "3Hs") in local families. We hope this project module will benefit more NGOs and families in the long run."

FAMILY: A Jockey Club Initiative for a Harmonious Society is a citywide project launched by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust with HK$250 million funding, in collaboration with the School of Public Health of The University of Hong Kong.  The project aims to identify the sources of family problems, devise suitable preventive measures and promote the "3Hs" through a citywide household survey, intervention projects and public education programmes. For more information about

The Hong Kong Jockey Club

Founded in 1884, The Hong Kong Jockey Club has become one of Hong Kong's best known and respected organisations, providing the public with world-class sporting entertainment as well as being the city's major non-Government community benefactor, now donating more than HK$1 billion a year to charitable and community projects.  It has been a part of Hong Kong through good times and bad, sharing the city's growth and development with its people, and is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for future generations.

Attachments

1. Press Conference PowerPoint Presentation
2. Letters to Mothers - written by two daughters whose mothers had participated in the "FAMILY: Effective Parenting Programme" (*Chinese only)