Enhancing relationship strengths in immigrant and refugee families: Examining the feasibility and acceptability of the ANCHOR parenting program.

Authors

Catherine L Costigan, Emilie E Longtin, Jie Li, Jessica Y Li, Barbie Jain

Published in

Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Volume 36. Issue 4.

Abstract

Supportive parent-child relationships enable adolescents to navigate developmental transitions, respond to discrimination, strengthen ethnic-racial identity, and maintain well-being. Yet migration-related stressors, including systemic barriers, economic insecurity, parent-child acculturation gaps, and shifts in family roles, can strain these relationships. This paper reports a single-group pre-post evaluation of ANCHOR (Advancing Newcomer Caregivers' Harmony, Openness, and Resilience), a strength-based, community-informed program designed to support immigrant and refugee caregivers of adolescents. Grounded in attachment-based relational processes, ANCHOR aims to strengthen parents' ability to serve as a secure base and source of guidance throughout adolescence. Across 11 program deliveries involving 116 caregivers, 96 completed satisfaction surveys and provided qualitative feedback and 48 also completed pre- and post-program assessments of parenting and relationship strengths. Among caregivers with pre-post data, repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVAs) indicated significant increases in parenting efficacy, parental empathy, and parent-child congruence. Reflexive thematic analysis identified perceived improvements in emotionally attuned communication, appreciation of children's perspectives, confidence in supporting adolescents' needs and navigating a new sociocultural context, and trust and connection within parent-adolescent relationships. Caregivers also emphasized the importance of a supportive group process that centered cultural strengths. These results suggest that ANCHOR is a feasible and acceptable intervention for immigrant and refugee caregivers (82.3% women) and provide preliminary evidence of improvements in parenting confidence, empathy, and parent-adolescent relationships. Further evaluation using more rigorous controlled designs is warranted.

PMID:
43000913
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 09 Nov 2026.

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