Evaluation of a Preventive Intervention for Bereaved Children

Abstract

One hundred eighty four families completed a twelve month parent-guidance (experimental) or a parent telephone-monitoring (comparison) intervention initiated during one parent's terminal cancer illness and continued until six months after the death. Children in the parent-guidance intervention reported greater reduction in trait anxiety and greater improvement in their perceptions of the surviving parent's competence and communication, a primary goal of the intervention. Identified problems in implementing evaluations of experimental interventions with bereaved children include the following: (1) Available and commonly used standardized psychopathology measures do not adequately capture changes in non-psychopathological but bereaved distressed, grieving children and adolescents. (2) Experimental and control samples usually have very few children with psychopathology (scores). Relatively small changes in scores within the normal range may be insufficient to allow measurement of meaningful differences between interventions. (3) Both experimental and control interventions must provide sufficient help to retain families for later evaluation. The level of general support and referral for other treatments, if adequately done, may be sufficient to blur differences in standardized psychopathology measure scores between any two interventions. It may only be in the specifically targeted intervention area that differences can be expected to be significant in adequately resourced families.

Minor Children of Palliative Patients: A Systematic Review of Psychosocial Family Interventions

“…Three studies 87,89,95 did not incorporate a control group, three compared the intervention with standard care/absence of counseling, 90,96,97 and one with telephone monitoring. 98 Sampling was either convenience 87 89,90,100 Reasons for nonparticipation were family-or disease-related burden or refusal of individual family members. 89 Parents in the counseling group were older, more often single, 92 and reported more emotional distress.…”

“…87 Adolescents especially experienced communication with healthy fathers as problematic. 98 When families participated in a program supporting parenting, children perceived improved parental competence and communication. 98 Altogether, participating families indicated that they were satisfied with counseling.…”

“…98 When families participated in a program supporting parenting, children perceived improved parental competence and communication. 98 Altogether, participating families indicated that they were satisfied with counseling. 90,95,97,98 In one study, 95 therapists were more critical than family members, whereas in another study 91 there were no differences between therapists' and family members' ratings.…”

Mapping evaluation of UK childhood bereavement services

“…Stokes, 2004;Christ et al, 2005;Rolls, 2007;Currier, Holland & Neimeyer, 2007;Sandler et al, 2008;Rosner, Krause & Hagl, 2010).…”

Evidence-based practices for parentally bereaved children and their families.

“…The intervention led to improvement in both child and family functioning (Rotheram-Borus, Lee et al, 2001;Rotheram-Borus, Stein & Lin, 2001). More recently, an anticipatory intervention for families with a parental diagnosis of terminal cancer was developed to enhance surviving parents' abilities to provide support for their children, provide an environment in which children would feel comfortable expressing their feelings about the loss, and provide consistency and stability in the children's environment before and after the death (Christ et al, 2005;Siegel, Mesagno, & Christ, 1990). Although an experimental evaluation of this program did not yield significant effects on children's mental health problems, there were trends for children who participated in the program to exhibit lower mental health problems and improved self-esteem than those in the control group (Christ et al, 2005).…”