PEEM Practitioners Guide

1.0 Why Use a Measure?

2.0 Introducing the PEEM

What is the Parent Empowerment and Efficacy Measure?

The PEEM is a reliable way to measure parental self-efficacy.

It was developed for use in frontline service and in partnership with family support practitioners who were members of the diverse cultural communities they supported.
The practitioners who helped develop PEEM offered a wide range of family support activities tailored to the families that they served.
Activities included: culturally and linguistically appropriate Deadly Playgroups; parenting programs; advocacy; counselling; life-skills programs; intensive individual support for grief, loss, and surviving trauma.

The PEEM has been validated for rigor and reliability.

The PEEM is:

A structured set of questions that can help shape conversations around some fundamental parenting issues
A tool for listening, understanding, and guiding action
A tool for seeing change and the positive progress being made (and for celebrating and motivating positive parenting)

The PEEM aims to help you gather useful information to guide your work with families.

Good information empowers both practitioners and families.

One of the most important steps in supporting someone is to listen to them and help them tell their own story.

The PEEM uses a strengths-based approach to measure parenting confidence.
It focuses on caregivers’ sense of control or the feeling they can engage confidently with the joys and challenges of being a parent.
When used as part of a gently unfolding process, the PEEM places parents at the centre of their own future, and encourages them to identify their parenting strengths, and any influences within their environment that may help or hinder their power to achieve their parenting goals.

2.1 Giving Parents a Voice

2.2 Why Focus on Self-efficacy?

Find out more about what the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children showed when they used the PEEM

Findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) show that parent efficacy links to what’s going on for both parents and kids.

LSIC included PEEM items in some of their data collection waves.

The report on Footprints in Time Wave 5 showed that for primary carers, parent efficacy (measured using PEEM) was associated with other reported outcomes in areas like:

Children’s social skills and emotional difficulties (measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire-SDQ)
Family financial stress

Satisfaction with relationships
Feelings of being part of a community
Community safety
Parent health

3.0 Using the PEEM in Your Practice

3.1 The PEEM Response Scale

How to Introduce the PEEM

Downloadable Support Guide

4.0 Gaining Valuable Insights

INTERPRETING the PEEM SCORES

When the PEEM was being developed, a great many parents from many walks of life and diverse backgrounds and experiences were invited to respond as part of the process of validation and psychometric testing.

The average scores included in the reference table below are provided as a general guide for thinking about the scores obtained by parents in your group. Try not to think in terms of whether a score is a “good” or “bad”. Rather, think about how it is positioned relative to the broad norming population distribution. Scores that fall near the population average reflect a comfortable level of efficacy.

The distribution of PEEM scores in the population is shaped like a bell – most people score close to the average, and the further away from the mean you go, the fewer people there are with that score.

It’s the same with lots of other attributes – like height for example: Most adults are somewhere around the average height. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any very tall and quite short people – it’s just that percentage-wise there are fewer people at those ends of the distribution than there are people of average height (in the middle of the range).

As a rule of thumb with the PEEM:

Scores that fall more than one standard deviation above the population mean can be considered rather high, and scores that fall more than one standard deviation below the population mean are considered rather low.

So, for the PEEM total score where the population mean is 154 and the SD is 24: a score of less than 130 (i.e., 154 minus 24) can be considered fairly low, and a score of more than 178 (154+24) is quite high.

For the Efficacy to Parent sub-score where the mean is 87 and standard deviation is 13: a score less than 74 is low while a score more than 100 is high.

For the Efficacy to Connect sub-score where the mean is 67 and standard deviation is 12: a score less than 55 is low and more than 79 is high.

PEEM total score: Mean = 154, SD = 24 → Low: <130, High: >178
Efficacy to Parent sub-score: Mean = 87, SD = 13 → Low: <74, High: >100
Efficacy to Connect sub-score: Mean = 67, SD = 12 → Low: <55, High: >79

What does this mean?

The real message that’s very important for you to take away is that being in the middle is to be expected and is perfectly fine. By definition, most people are expected to have a mid-range score – close to the population average.
It’s being right up at the top that is somewhat unusual. If you find someone has scored at the top, you may like to consider whether they have responded in a way that truly reflects what they feel – or perhaps they were just trying to please you?

If you are wondering what a “good” score is: the average is perfectly fine. What makes a score “good” is whether it helps you identify where some opportunities to tailor support for that parent and their family exist.

5.0 Using your Data to Review Progress

6.0 Taking Action

How would you plan with Ruby?

7.0 Advanced use of the PEEM

7.1 What to Remember When Using PEEM in Conversation

What did you notice in the video of Jamie and Skye?

There were some clear take-away ideas in the way Jamie:

Offered Skye encouragement
Made certain to point out Skye’s strengths, even while acknowledging the challenges she was facing
Identified opportunities to offer Skye some immediate support
Set out some simple concrete steps for action

Jamie identified some relevant issues for goal setting and action that fell out of their discussion. For instance:

She took time to focus on the need to help Skye deal with Remy’s tantrums. They agreed that the structure of the playgroup may help, but it was evident that the tantrums might be linked to the difficulties Remy has communicating. Speech therapy has been initiated but Jamie suggested that there may be other ways she could help and possibly Triple P may be an option to explore next time they meet.
Jamie also highlighted the importance of helping Skye to rebuild her social network.
And the need to support Skye’s wellbeing by making time for self-care and to pursue her own interests.

8.0 Conclusion

Recapping PEEM’s function in family practice:

It provides families with an opportunity to tell their story and have their voices heard
It offers a scaffold for conversation and a structure for listening – so each family’s self-identified issues can be incorporated into a support plan they create together with their family support practitioners. This aligns with strengths-based approaches that engage families as participants in service design.
It helps you to record and articulate change, so significant achievements don’t go unnoticed
It helps you to make data count!

Recapping when to use the PEEM:

First Time

Ideally, PEEM can be introduced to parents in the early stages of your working partnership with them. The initial measure can help set directions for a support plan and provide a reference point against which to measure positive change over time.

Next Time

Repeating the measure periodically (e.g., after participating in a structured parenting program or a month or two into a longer-term family support plan) provides an opportunity to review and reflect on changes in parents’ strengths, capabilities, and feelings resulting from the work you’ve done together.

This resource is an initiative of RealWell and was produced with the support of the Koorie Outcomes Division of the Department of Education, Victoria.