Engaging Male Caregivers in Effective Prevention Programming to Reduce Risk of Violence and Violence-Related Injury

Summary

Fathers are disproportionately involved in and responsible for family violence. Forty percent of maltreatment cases include the child's father, which is quite considerable when one considers mothers spend more time with the child during the day and engage in a greater variety of activities, relative to fathers. Importantly, the majority of child victims were those five and younger.

Contrary to these potential negative impacts, fathers contribute positively to many aspects of child development and overall family functioning, making unique contributions to child peer relationships, language development, academic skills, and the proficiency of the other parent in parenting tasks. Thus, efforts to emphasize the father's role in the child's life, and attenuate any potential risks due to child or family directed violence, represent key public health initiatives within prevention efforts.

There are many potential prevention programs that have been developed to support male caregivers. The Nurturing Fathers program and the Coaching Our Children: Heightening Essential Skills program are two examples of father-focused preventive intervention efforts. However, these approaches have not typically been evaluated as preventive interventions in community-based samples using scientifically rigorous methods. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in reducing family violence and improving male caregiver competencies in a randomized, controlled trial. Specifically, Nurturing Fathers Alone and Nurturing Fathers + COACHES will be compared to an attention control, and male caregivers and their children will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups.

Conditions

• Child Maltreatment
• Parenting

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Behavioral Parent Support

Parent training on effective child management strategies

BEHAVIORAL

Shared Parent-Child Activities

Structured parent-child activities

BEHAVIORAL

COACHES

This intervention involves practice of parenting strategies with facilitator monitoring and support.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Buffalo Prenatal Perinatal Network

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Florida International University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

3 Years

Max Age

6 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-03-01

Primary Completion

2024-06-30

Completion

2024-07-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations