Dyadic, Skills-Based Primary Prevention for Partner Violence in Perinatal Parents

Summary

Couple CARE for Parents is a couple-focused intervention that addresses interpersonal processes within relationships and promotes relationship and parenting skills among couples with a newborn. Couple CARE for Parents uses an approach developed in Australia that was designed to be fairly easy and cost-effective to disseminate widely (i.e., home-visitation and video- and telephone-assisted skills training). It has demonstrated efficacy for significantly enhancing couples' relationship satisfaction in three Australian randomized trials.

Arresting the normal decline of satisfaction of new parents to near-clinical levels is noteworthy because relationship dissatisfaction is one of the strongest predictors of partner physical assault. Managing relationship conflict is critical to the health and well-being of both parents and their children. Given the high prevalence of partner physical and emotional aggression (a precursor to the more serious form labeled "intimate partner violence" \[IPV\]) in new parents) among perinatal parents, the need for efficacious prevention services is acute.

This randomized, controlled trial will test if couples with a newborn who receive Couple CARE for Parents report significantly less IPV than control couples who do not receive the program. This is a prevention trial. No couple will report ever having experienced IPV. All couples will have three empirically documented risk factors for the development of IPV: youth (each couple will have at least one partner under 30 years of age), parenting a newborn, and psychological aggression in the past year.

The project has the following aims: (1) Determine the outcomes of Couple CARE for Parents. The investigators hypothesize that, among other positive outcomes, couples who receive Couple CARE for Parents, compared with those who do not, will report at follow-up (a) less IPV; and (b) less partner physical and emotional aggression. (2) Identify factors that may contribute to reduction in IPV and in physical and emotional aggression (e.g., communication skills, conflict behaviors, parenting expectations, , quality of adult attachment, partner attributions, child abuse potential, family income, marital status, parenting stress, infant difficultness).

Conditions

• Intimate Partner Violence

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Couple CARE for Parents

Couple CARE for Parents is a skill-based relationship enhancement program based on a self-regulatory model. It consists of seven sessions and two follow-up booster sessions that occur over the baby's first eight months of life. The first home visit is scheduled 7 - 14 days following recruitment. The next two sessions are scheduled in two week intervals. Sessions 4 through 7 are scheduled in three week intervals. Home visits are expected to last 1.5 to 2 hrs. Out-of-session viewing of the video and completing the exercises typically requires 45 min to 1 hr. The typical phone consultation lasts 15- to 30- min per person. Thus, the program lasts a minimum of 8 to 12 hours. The program will also include two booster sessions (beyond the 8 - 12 hrs).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  collaborator FED

• New York University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-03-31

Primary Completion

2012-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations