PARENT AWARENESS SKILLS SURVEY (PASS)

Purpose: Measures parenting skills in typical childcare situations, revealing the degree to which a parent understands the many ways both verbal and non-verbal communications can either help or sabotage a child’s feelings and behavior

Age: Parents undergoing a child custody evaluation, a parental fitness evaluation, or involved in family therapy

Testing Time: 30 minutes to an hour, depending on levels administered

Scoring: 15 to 30 minutes, depending upon how many levels are administered

The PASS reflects the sensitivity and effectiveness with which a parent responds to typical childcare situations. Its scores pinpoint parental awareness of:

• The critical issues in a given situation

• The adequate solutions available for such situations

• The need to communicate in terms understandable to a child

• The desirability of acknowledging a child’s feelings

• The importance of the child’s own past history in the present circumstances

• The need to pay attention to how the child is responding in order to fine-tune one’s own response

Important neuroscience research by A.Morris, M. Criss, S. Silk, & B. Houltberg, (The Impact of Parenting on Emotion Regulation During Childhood and Adolescence), mirrors what we had in mind in creating the PASS. Morris et al. proposed a tripartite model suggesting that parents influence children’s emotion regulation through three mechanisms: children’s observation of parents’ emotion regulation, emotion-related parenting practices, and the emotional climate of the family.

Scores can be computed at three levels:

• Spontaneous Level: The parent’s spontaneous, uninterrupted responses to the situations.

• Probe Level One: The parent’s responses to gentle, nonleading questions.

• Probe Level Two: The parent’s responses to direct questions.

Clear differences between the parents at the spontaneous level obviates the need to proceed to the probe levels.  The Probe questions are ideal to add clinical data that illustrate the depth of a parent’s understanding of a child’s needs, and how much time and effort would be needed to upgrade a parent’s skills in raising children. This is important, since cost-of-increased-benefit is a vital and inescapable issue in the helping sciences.

A completed PASS test booklet contains the questions, answers as given by the parent, clinician’s notes, and scoring.

The PASS has been praised by family court judges throughout the country because it is directly about parenting skills and provides important information for custody evaluations by answering: “How much does a parent know about handling normal, everyday childcare situations?”  Any professional who would profit from having crystal-clear information about a parent’s awareness of the needs of children will love the PASS. It provides a quick way to pinpoint any key area in which a parent would profit from guidance in establishing truly helpful relations with his or her children.

Contains: PASS Manual and Scoring Guide, 8 PASS Scoring Booklets, 8 PASS Scoring Summaries.

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