Promoting Healthy Families: A Canadian Evaluation

Summary

Interventions that promote safe, stable, and nurturing relationships between caregivers and children are key to improving healthy family relationships, reducing child socioemotional and behaviour problems, and preventing child maltreatment. Although a broad range of parenting programs are currently implemented in communities across Ontario, most programs are inadequately evaluated, or else not evaluated at all. Using a three-armed randomized controlled trial, the aim of the current study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two parenting programs, the Triple P - Positive Parenting Program (group - level 4) and the Circle of Security Parenting Program (group) compared to treatment as usual in Ontario, Canada.

Conditions

• Child Behavior Problem
• Parenting

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Triple P

Triple P - level 4 group is a group-based parenting intervention for families with children who exhibit behavioural or emotional difficulties. Group sessions typically focus on topics such as positive parenting, helping children develop, managing misbehaviour, and planning ahead. Practitioners then provide individual feedback on progress using positive parenting strategies and goal setting. Trained practitioners will deliver the program according to the manualized protocol (Turner, Markie-Dadds, \& Sanders, 2010). This will include eight weekly sessions with maximum of 12 parents. The first four sessions will be as group sessions. These four group sessions will be followed by three one-to-one practical and personalised telephone consultations. Finally, there will be one group session, which will complete the programme and parents' contact with the Triple P practitioners. The main aim of this session is to review progress and plan for the future.

BEHAVIORAL

Circle of Security Parenting

Circle of Security - Parenting (COS-P) will be delivered according to the protocol outlined by Cooper, Hoffman and Powell (Cooper et al., 2009). COS-P is a manualized eight-session parent-education group program which has the same broad aims and core components of the COS-Intensive model from which it was developed (i.e., to increase caregiver sensitivity and responsiveness to child cues, empathy for the child by supporting parental reflective functioning, recognition and understanding of child attachment cues, and awareness of the impact of the caregiver's own attachment history on caregiving patterns). The program is led by one or two facilitators and includes 10-12 caregivers. The program uses clinical DVD clips of problematic parent-child interaction and healthy alternatives to illustrate attachment patterns and parenting styles, and to promote group discussion.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Manitoba

  collaborator OTHER

• Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences

  collaborator OTHER

• Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• University of Exeter

  collaborator OTHER

• McMaster University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Andrea Gonzalez, PhD · McMaster University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

2 Years

Max Age

6 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-02-10

Primary Completion

2024-03-15

Completion

2024-03-17

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations