Empowering older Chinese immigrant volunteers: A pilot study of a psychoeducational intervention for foster grandparents

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate whether a psychoeducational intervention provided to older Chinese immigrant foster grandparents (FGs) would improve their knowledge, skills, confidence, coping skills, and mental health outcomes when working with children who have special needs. Pre and posttests with standardized measures were conducted among older Chinese immigrant FGs (N ​= ​18). Non-parametric Wilcoxon signed rank tests were conducted to examine whether the main outcome measures were significantly different after the intervention. Results showed that FGs experienced improvement in grandparenting empowerment, caregiving mastery skills, perceived social support, negative social interaction, as well as life satisfaction after the intervention. However, the results did not show improvement in measurements of stress, knowledge of formal services, and coping skills after the psychoeducational intervention. Overall, the result suggests that this psychoeducational intervention is a promising one for older Chinese immigrant FGs with implications for other minority populations. Recommendations and strategies for enhancing interprofessional collaboration to address the needs of FGs are also provided.

Keywords

• Foster grandparents
• Psychoeducational intervention
• Chinese immigrants
• Volunteers