Design and development of an educational programme for divorcing parents to prevent adjustment problems in children

Abstract

Divorce is a serious and ongoing problem, not only in South Africa, but also in the rest of the world. Children of divorce become the victims of their parent’s inability to deal with their differences, their lack of logical reasoning, and poor conflict management. While a divorce can be hard on children, it is often the fighting of the parents that most directly affects the children, and the impact depends on how well the parents can isolate the children from these disruptions. Divorce educational programmes for divorcing parents are presented globally and at many of these programmes, attendance is compulsory. South Africa requires a divorce educational programme for parents to prevent the adjustment problems in children during the process of divorce. SECTION A refers to the problem statement, the research objectives, procedures, and methodology. The keywords as well as the limitations of the research study are discussed. The research was conducted according to the phases in intervention research. Phase 1 was an integrated literature review, Phase 2 was an empirical study utilising Google Forms, and Phase 3 was the design and development of the divorce educational programme. During Phase 4, the proposed programme was evaluated by means of the Delphi technique with experts in the field of divorce and during Phase 5, the proposed programme was presented to divorcing spouses. The problem statement in Section A is based on the fact that South Africa has a high divorce rate (SA Stats, 2018), impacting negatively on the development and emotional... "For full access to the abstract, please consult the attached fulltext"