Caroline Mavridis

Assistant Research Professor, Assistant Director CHHD

HDFS

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Professional Interests

• The role of cultural context in parenting and children’s development

  

• Mothers’ beliefs and experiences related to motherhood, self-care and well-being
• Evaluation of programs to educate and empower frontline family workers
• Family workers’ self-care and well-being
• Culture and climate in human services organizations

I am trained in anthropology and human development. My research has focused on mixed-methods approaches to the study of:  parenting across cultures; self-care, support, and well-being in vulnerable groups (early postpartum mothers, and frontline family-service workers); and community evaluations of training programs and effects on workers, agencies, and families. The recent article “Family workers, stress, and the limits of self-care” (Mavridis, Harkness, Super, & Liu, 2019) illustrates the impact of having multiple work and personal stresses on engagement in self-care practices. I am continuing my study of experiences of family service agency staff through a study of clinical supervisors and their adaptations to operational changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I am a portfolio reviewer for both the Connecticut and National Family Development Credential ® Program, based at the CHHD. I am also a certified FDC instructor of both the 90-hour “Empowerment Skills for Frontline Workers” course as well as the 30-hour “Empowerment Skills for Leaders.” Later in 2020 I will also begin co-facilitating Instructor Institutes to certify new FDC instructors across the U.S. In recent months working with my colleague Dr. Haley Scott at the CT Office of Early Childhood, we developed guidelines for instructors to adapt their highly interactive, activity-based FDC courses to a distance-learning mode.

Current project

Clinical Supervision of Home Visitors at a Distance: Challenges and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In collaboration with my CHHD colleague Kim Gans, in this current project we are addressing social distancing measures implemented in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they impact supervision of frontline staff and their work with families who may be in even greater financial, health, and relationship crisis than before the quarantine. Through semi-structured interviews, which will incorporate the feedback of agency supervisors, we will examine themes that include: changes in communications with frontline staff; new challenges and stresses for agencies and families (e.g. domestic violence, missing immunizations); supervisors’ self-care; and additional changes or supports needed.  This work is funded through a 2020 CHHD Faculty Seed Grant, and is being done in close collaboration with our longtime partners at the CT Office of Early Childhood Family Support Service Division.

Recent CHHD-related publications

van Schaik, S.D.M., Mavridis, C., de Looze, M.E., Blom, M.J.M., Super, C.M., & Harkness, S. (2020). Getting the baby on a schedule: Dutch and American mothers’ ethnotheories and the establishment of diurnal rhythms in early infancy. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

Harkness, S., Super, C.M., Bonichini, S., Bermudez, M.R., Mavridis, C., van Schaik, S.D.M., Tomkunas, A., & Palacios, J. (2020). Parents, preschools, and the developmental niches of young children: A study in four Western cultures. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

Mavridis, C., Harkness, S., Super, C.M., & Liu, J.L. (2019).  Family workers, stress, and the limits of self-care.  Children and Youth Services Review, 103, 236-246.

Mavridis, C., & Lorenzo, P. (2018). Time management: Managing case notes and paperwork. Training materials developed for the Maternal and Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Innovation Award Video Modules (Sponsor: The CT Office of Early Childhood).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.06.011