Building early relationships: a review of caregiver–child interaction interventions for use in community-based early childhood programmes

Abstract

Children's early relationships with their caregivers are important for later developmental outcomes, both proximally and distally, and enhanced caregiverchild relationships may promote positive outcomes at both the individual and family levels. In this article, we review six evidence-based caregiver-child interaction interventions that can be translated for use by staff in community-based early childhood programmes serving children between the ages of birth and five years. Early childhood programmes selecting a parenting intervention have opportunities to set priorities across a number of relevant criteria, ranging from the theoretical basis of the intervention to more practical issues such as the time commitment for families and staff requirements. To provide a starting point for such considerations, we compare the interventions' approaches and associated training requirements, summarise the evidence base for each intervention, and identify areas of divergence and common themes across the six selected interventions.

Caregivers’ emotional competence and behavioral responsiveness as correlates of early childcare workers’ relationships with children in their care

“…Some researchers have even asserted that relationships are the curriculum (e.g., Deynoot‐Schaub & Riksen‐Walraven, ) because early childhood professionals use their relationships with children as a tool for the provision of optimal learning experiences (Brebner, Hammond, Schaumloffel, & Lind, ). When these relationships are healthy and emotionally supportive, they tend to result in positive developmental outcomes and operate as a protective factor for children (e.g., Ereky‐Stevens, Funder, Katschnig, Malmberg, & Datler, ; Garner & Waajid, ; Vu, Hustedt, Pinder, & Han, ). As one example, positive and stable caregiver–child relationships may safeguard against young children's overarousal and dysregulation and set the stage for growth in self‐regulation and affect tolerance (Feldman & Vengrober, ).…”

Research Foundations for Evidence-Informed Early Childhood Intervention Performance Checklists

“…As part of an applied research study using family capacity-building help giving practice to promote parents' use of interest-based everyday activities for child language learning, the use of capacity-building practices by early childhood practitioners were related to both parents' fidelity of use of the practices [296] and indirectly related to child language learning mediated by parents' use of the interventions practices with fidelity [95]. Results from a number of research syntheses include evidence for similar pathways of influence [55,134,292,297]. The results, taken together, indicate that family capacity-building practices that support and reinforce parenting confidence and competence are important for parents' use of practices strengthening parent-child relationships and promoting child learning and development [292,298].…”

“…These types of implementation practices have been found to be effective in terms of promoting practitioner and parents' use of development-enhancing interactional practices; for example, [246,297,315,317,318,336,339,340].…”

Handbook of Early Childhood Special Education

“…The reviews included descriptions of one or more characteristics of a practice constituting the focus of a research synthesis and the outcomes of interest to the investigators. The different reviews included either only one type of study (e.g., Shields, Pratt, & Hunter, 2006 ;Vu, Hustedt, Pinder, & Han, 2014 ) or two or more types of studies (e.g., Campbell, Milbourne, Dugan, & Wilcox, 2006 ;Korfmacher et al, 2008 ). The nature of the evidence for the relationship between the practice characteristics and study outcomes differs, but each synthesis nonetheless includes information that can be used to identify which characteristics for a practice "stand out" as most important in terms of implications for practice.…”