Family Intervention Services program evaluation: A brief report on initial outcomes for families
Warren Cann
Victorian Parenting Centre, Melbourne VIC
Helen Rogers
Victorian Parenting Centre, Melbourne VIC
Jan Matthews
Victorian Parenting Centre, Melbourne VIC
PP: 208 - 215
Abstract
This is a brief report on a preliminary evaluation of the Metropolitan Family Intervention Service at the Victorian Parenting Centre, Melbourne, Australia. It presents an analysis of pre-post data collected from 589 mothers who commenced and completed Triple P programs between 1999 and early 2003. Forty five percent of children were found to be in the clinical range for child behaviour problems before intervention.
Following the parenting program only twelve percent of children were reported by their parents to be in the clinical range. Significant improvements were also noted in measures of parental style, sense of competence, depression, anxiety, stress, and couple conflict.
Keywords
parenting, family intervention, Triple P, evaluation
Article Text
The Family Intervention Service (FIS) Metropolitan Project was one of three FIS projects tendered by the Victorian Government Department of Human Services in 1998. The FIS initiative was designed to extend and augment the Positive Parenting Program's (Triple P) primary care strategy in selected regions in Victoria by enhancing the existing service system's capacity to provide Level 4 and 5 interventions for families with multiple difficulties, and children exhibiting signs of social, emotional, or behavioural problems.
Triple P aims to: (a) enhance the knowledge, skills, confidence, self sufficiency, and resourcefulness of parents of pre-adolescent children; (b) promote the development of nurturing, safe, engaging, nonviolent and low conflict environments for children; and (c) enhance children's social, emotional, language, intellectual and behavioural competencies through positive parenting practices (Sanders, 1999: 72). Triple P is based on a social learning model of parent-child interaction and research that has focussed on the development of social competencies in children and risk factors for the development of behavioural problems. Strong empirical evidence exists for the effectiveness of parent training programs based on a social learning approach in the treatment of children with disruptive behavioural disorders (see Kazdin, 1998), and this is substantial empirical support for the efficacy of the Triple P program in particular (see Sanders, 1999 for a review).
The FIS Metropolitan project and the service was established in February 1999. The program operated in the Northern Metropolitan region of Victoria and attempted to engage families in a parenting program before parent-child relationship difficulties placed their children at risk for more serious problems. The specific aims of the parenting program were to:
- Assist parents from high-risk groups, or families exhibiting early indications of difficulties in their relationships with their children, to acquire skills known to promote the development, health, safety, and emotional wellbeing of children.
- Promote the independence of families and satisfaction with the parenting role.
- Improve early detection and early intervention for children with more severe behavioural problems.
- Improve detection and early intervention of families whose children are at risk of being abused.
- Divert families from the child protection and mental health systems by developing parenting skills and positive parent-child interaction patterns.
This report addresses the first two of these aims. The service targeted areas in the region likely to contain large numbers of at risk families as potential participants for group parent training programs or individual higher level interventions for families with more complex needs. The parenting groups provided a generic, non-threatening entry point for parents. The aim was to achieve a high community profile and high participation rates in parenting groups to normalise parental help seeking in the targeted community.
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