The Feasibility, Appropriateness, Meaningfulness, and Effectiveness of Parenting and Family Support Programs Delivered in the Criminal Justice System: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Children whose parents are involved in the criminal justice system (CJS) are at increased risk of developing social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties and are more likely than their peers to become involved in the CJS themselves. Parenting behaviour and parent-child relationships have the potential to affect children’s outcomes with positive parenting practices having the potential to moderate some of the negative outcomes associated with parental involvement in the CJS. However, many parents in the CJS may lack appropriate role models to support the development of positive parenting beliefs and practices. Parenting programs offer an opportunity for parents to enhance their parenting knowledge and behaviours and improve relationships with children. Quantitative and qualitative evidence pertaining to the implementation and effectiveness of parenting programs delivered in the CJS was included. Five databases were searched and a total of 1145 articles were identified of which 29 met the review inclusion criteria. Overall, programs were found to significantly improve parenting attitudes; however, evidence of wider effects is limited. Additionally, the findings indicate that parenting programs can be meaningful for parents. Despite this, a number of challenges for implementation were found including the transient nature of the prison population and a lack of parent-child contact. Based on these findings, recommendations for the future development and delivery of programs are discussed.

Engaging parents involved in Community Corrections: The role of parenting interventions in improving child and parent outcomes

“…The topic of parenting interventions for incarcerated parents has attracted recent interest as is evident by the recent publications of two systematic reviews (Tremblay & Sutherland, 2017;Troy, McPherson, Emslie, & Gilchrist, 2018) and a systematic review and meta-analysis (Armstrong et al, 2018) examining the effectiveness of parenting interventions for this population of parents. The systematic reviews broadly included different types of parenting interventions that had been evaluated within the CJS.…”

“…A third systematic review synthesized qualitative and quantitative data to examine the feasibility of delivering parenting interventions in the CJS context (i.e., any form of correctional setting, none of the included studies were conducted at community corrections), parent perceptions of the appropriateness and meaningfulness of the interventions, and program effectiveness (Troy et al, 2018). A total of 29 studies were included (3 randomised controlled trials, 14 quasiexperimental designs, 9 single-group pre to post-test designs, 1 cohort study, 2 retrospective studies).…”

“…Overall, there are several limitations to conducting research within custodial facilities and all three systematic reviews recommended adjusting the methodologies of future studies (Armstrong et al, 2018;Tremblay & Sutherland, 2017;Troy et al, 2018). The key limitation pertains to incarcerated parents having restricted contact with their children and thus limited opportunities to implement the parenting strategies that they learn through parenting interventions (Troy et al, 2018;Woodward, 2003). The limited access to children for incarcerated parents may reduce the effectiveness of skills-based parenting interventions delivered within custodial facilities.…”

“…For example, the systematic review by Tremblay and Sutherland (2017) identified 16 different parenting interventions and only six of the identified interventions had an established evidence-base. Lastly, few studies within the CJS context have conducted evaluations to examine the acceptability or relevance of the offered parenting interventions to parents (Troy et al, 2018).…”

“…This dissertation aims to contribute to the paucity of literature on parenting support for CJSinvolved parents in the community. The dissertation comprises data from three main studies: a quantitative survey (Chapter 2), a qualitative focus group study (Chapter 3), and a mixed methods feasibility study (Chapter 4 (Tremblay & Sutherland, 2017;Troy et al, 2018). Thus, the study that is presented in this chapter was a central first step in this research series as knowledge relating to the availability and access to parenting services for CJS-involved parents in the community was limited.…”