An Australian adaptation of the Strengthening Families Program: Parent and child mental health outcomes from a pilot study

Abstract

Objective: This is the first pilot study to examine the Australian adaptation of the Strengthening Families Program (SFP), a manualised family intervention recommended internationally in evidence reviews to improve family functioning and child mental health. The study compared two versions (8 vs. 14-session) and longitudinally evaluated outcomes for child emotional and behavioural difficulties, and parental psychological distress. Method: Fifty-eight families from disadvantaged primary schools in regional Victoria with children 8-12 years (80.6% of initially enrolled families, 62 parents and 74 children) completed the program and evaluation measures. Measures were repeated at pre-, post-, and 3-month follow-up and included the Kessler 6, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, and subscales adapted from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and Communities that Care Youth Survey. Results: The program showed significant reductions in child difficulties and parental psychological distress from pre-to post-measurements that were sustained at follow-up. Reductions in parental psychological distress were significantly associated with reductions in child difficulties at follow-up. The 8-and 14-session formats were not found to be significantly different in reducing child difficulties or parental psychological distress. Effect sizes for the Australian version were similar to those reported in previous U.S. trials. Conclusions: Findings support the feasibility and effectiveness of an Australian adaptation of the SFP. The current study is unique in identifying similar outcomes for shorter and longer versions of the intervention. It is recommended that the 8-session Australian version is examined in a larger randomised controlled trial where children present with behavioural and emotional problems.K E Y W O R D S child behavioural problems, child emotional problems, family-based intervention, mental health, parental psychological distress, prevention

The tween years: A systematic literature review for services for children aged 10–13 years

“…These included the Family Preservation Services (FPS), Strengthening Family's Program (SFP), Contact Family/Person Program (CFPP), and the Turning into Teens (TINT) program. Except the TINT and SFP programs (Burn et al, 2019), the results of parental and youth reports indicated negative outcomes in a majority of the offered interventions.…”

“…SFP showed promising results in reducing pre-adolescent difficulties and parental distress (Burn et al, 2019) but not in addressing adolescent substance misuse (Foxcroft et al, 2017). Despite the worse outcome of reunified children, positive adult-child ties were highlighted by Biehal et al (2015) as a key contributing factor for the overall success of the FPS.…”

“…Program duration also varied from as little as 24min to as many as 3 hours per session, over 14 sessions (Burn et al, 2019).…”

“…Of the ten non-randomised studies, three were rated with low risks of bias, five with moderate risks of bias, and two had a serious risk of bias (see Figure 3). studies by Anthony and McLean (2015) and Burn et al (2019) were all rated with a "serious" overall risk of bias. In Anthony and McLean's study, the provided intervention was interfered with a second program whose effect highly impacted its results.…”

“…The Health Education Program's effectiveness also depended on the social-economic status of the adolescent's family (Gupta et al, 2015). Another factor that moderated the effectiveness of programs was whether providers considered including carers or parents in pre-adolescents designed interventions (Burn et al, 2019;Eg et al, 2017;Havighurst et al, 2015;Jessiman et al, 2017). Lastly, except for the role of carers and social workers in foster care services, other factors that did not seem to influence the effectiveness of provided services included but were not limited to study design, follow-up period, sample size, and personnel delivering the service.…”