Reunifying Families After an Out-of-Home Residential Stay: Evaluation of a Blended Intervention

Abstract

For youth placed in out-of-home residential care, there has been a trend towards shorter lengths of stay and earlier reentry into the community. In order to support reentry, we propose blending out-of-home residential care with aftercare services. In this study 89 youth that were in or at risk of entering the juvenile justice system received a unique blend of a behavioral-focused residential care program with a family based in-home aftercare service. Results indicate that youth displayed decreased behavior problems and families practiced improved parenting skills at discharge. Further, at discharge from services youth were reported to engage in more positive interactions with peers. Follow-up data also suggested that at 12 months post-discharge, these youth had a high rate of remaining arrest-free, were living in a homelike setting, and had either graduated or were attending school.

Web-Based Parent Training in Parents with Adolescents Admitted to Psychiatric Residential Treatment: A Mixed-Methods Study

“…A second factor is that treatment plans may focus on the presenting disruptive behaviors with limited attention on preparing the family and adolescent for discharge (Herbell & Breitenstein, 2020 ). Thus, families may feel unprepared for discharge, and adolescents may enter the same unchanged home environment (Ringle et al, 2015 ). Effective treatment plans should fully address the underlying trauma driving disruptive behaviors (Bryson et al, 2017 ).…”

“…A second parenting intervention that has been used with the RT population, Ringle & colleagues ( 2015 ) blended intervention, consists of RT combined with aftercare services for children at risk of entering the juvenile justice system. A key component of this model is an in-home family consultant working with families beginning at RT admission through three months post-discharge (Ringle et al, 2015 ).…”

“…A second parenting intervention that has been used with the RT population, Ringle & colleagues ( 2015 ) blended intervention, consists of RT combined with aftercare services for children at risk of entering the juvenile justice system. A key component of this model is an in-home family consultant working with families beginning at RT admission through three months post-discharge (Ringle et al, 2015 ). The parenting component of the intervention includes promoting supervision and monitoring, consistency with discipline, healthy relationships with family and peers, academic success, and developing a support network (Ringle et al, 2015 ).…”

“…A key component of this model is an in-home family consultant working with families beginning at RT admission through three months post-discharge (Ringle et al, 2015 ). The parenting component of the intervention includes promoting supervision and monitoring, consistency with discipline, healthy relationships with family and peers, academic success, and developing a support network (Ringle et al, 2015 ). Results of the study indicate that compared to children in the control condition (i.e., treatment as usual), children that received the blended intervention improved in inattention, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms, and parents engaged in more effective parenting practices (Ringle et al, 2015 ).…”

Alabama Parenting Questionnaire-9: A reliability generalization meta-analysis.

“…Additionally, some researchers have not reported the coefficient α values obtained from their study-specific data, or have only reported α values from previous research as reference (e.g., Acri et al, 2017; Ringle et al, 2015). Both the omission and improper reporting of reliability estimates fall under a concept termed “reliability induction” (Henson & Thompson, 2002).…”