Project BELONG: Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Family Violence and Trauma

Summary

This study will examine the efficacy of a dyadic therapy intervention for mothers who have histories of adverse events (e.g., history of family violence, partner violence, family conflict, and/or childhood trauma, including abuse/neglect) and their very young children (ages 0-5 years), with the goal of demonstrating how an evidence supported, community-based and/or hospital-based therapeutic intervention may help reduce exposure to trauma and incidents of child maltreatment, improve parental stress and mental health, and secure parent-child attachment.

The three main objectives associated with Project BELONG are: 1) to determine the effectiveness of a dyadic care model in improving parent/child interaction, parenting confidence and competence, reducing parenting stress and social isolation, and improving access to concrete supports; 2) to address maltreatment risk in children by enhancing social-emotional functioning and developmental progress; and 3) to train new and future mental health professionals in dyadic mental health services and disseminate the model and findings through health professional schools and publications.

Conditions

• Mother-child Relations
• Parenting
• Parent Child Abuse
• Family Conflict
• Parental Stress
• Family Relations
• Childhood Disorder of Social Functioning, Unspecified

Interventions

OTHER

Therapeutic intervention

Therapeutic interventions will be delivered in ten 2-hour sessions over 12-15 weeks, which includes 2 research data collection sessions at the beginning of the study (pre-intervention) and at the end of the study (post-intervention). During the pre-intervention data collection session, participants will be asked to provide demographic information and complete interviews about their past experiences and current experiences as a parent, and their child's current functioning. Parents will also be video recorded interacting with their child for 10 minutes. During the post-intervention data collection session, participants will be asked to complete a similar set of interviews and will also be video recorded interacting with their child for 10 minutes.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The New School for Social Research

  collaborator OTHER

• Children's Bureau - Administration for Children and Families

  collaborator OTHER

• Boston Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Neena McConnico, PhD, LMHC · Boston Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-02-01

Primary Completion

2020-08-31

Completion

2020-09-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations