Program Goals/Target Population
The Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) program was developed to meet the needs of African American couples raising preadolescent and adolescent youth in the rural south. African American families often face chronic stressors, including limited economic resources, exposure to neighborhood violence, racial discrimination, and marital instability (Nelson et al. 2009). The program is designed to improve family functioning by targeting couple and parenting relationships, promoting positive interactions among couples, and enhancing positive youth development (which includes increasing substance use resistance, reducing conduct problems, and developing positive self-concept). The program seeks to improve parenting behaviors, which can then lead to improved youth outcomes.
Program Activities
The program includes six 2-hour sessions, delivered in the home, to maximize fathers’ participation. The sessions are primarily focused on parents, with youth joining the final 30 minutes of each session. The first 60 minutes of the sessions are focused on the couple’s issues, and the following 30 minutes focus on parenting topics. Couple issues include daily hassles and burdens, and communication skills such as active listening and recognition of how emotional states may compromise listening. Parenting or co-parenting issues include school, peers, parental monitoring, family rules, and building racial pride in children. The facilitator initiates discussion by focusing on the particular stressors that African American couples experience (e.g., work, racism, money), followed by an introduction to cognitive and behavioral techniques for managing stressors. Sessions then transition into encouraging the development of other protective couple and parenting processes such as conflict resolution and racial socialization. Each session emphasizes partners’ use of enhanced communication in response to daily stressors and use of pro-relationship behaviors to collaboratively address these stressors.
The facilitator then meets with the youth for a 15-minute activity focused on topics such as building self-esteem, handling peer pressure, and understanding parents. For the final 15 minutes of the session, both the youth and their parents engage in an activity such as a discussion or a game.
Program Theory
ProSAAF was developed through consideration of the unique stressors experienced by African American families in the rural south. Stress-spillover theories suggest that experiencing stressors (e.g., economic instability, violence, racism) reduces parents’ capacity to engage in positive co-parenting practices (Nelson et al. 2009). High levels of stress can be detrimental to family functioning, damaging the protective processes that foster resilience in families (Neff and Karney 2009). Additionally, theories on racial socialization suggest that the processes by which parents convey messages about race to their children affects how youth develop their racial identity. A positive racial identity is postulated to reduce substance use among youth of color (Neblett et al. 2008; Neblett, Terzian, and Harriott 2010).
Additional Information
ProSAAF is based on protective processes identified in prior prevention research, specifically from the Strong African American Families (SAAF) program developed by Brody and colleagues (2004). SAAF is a parent training and family therapy program designed to reduce youth substance use and sexual activity. ProSAAF added new components to the SAAF program, including content related to positive couple interactions, specific dimensions of protective parenting, and couples’ teamwork in the face of economic adversity and other daily stressors (Beach et al. 2016). The SAAF program can also be founded on the CrimeSolutions website: https://www.crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/41